Exhumed 38
by Mackiecam
Summary: Steph's Great-Uncle Arnie was spotted walking down the street by Grandma. The only problem? He's been dead for three months. Grandma asks Steph to look into it, but Steph is thirty weeks pregnant and has been ordered off work and away from the stress-inducing members of her family... Posted 2 x daily and definitely a babe
1. Chapter 1

_The following story is a work of fiction_ _that features characters developed by Janet Evanovich. No money has been earned through writing this story. Any similarities to real events or persons are entirely coincidental. _

_Although a stand-alone, this book builds upon the previous books in my series. Because it is a stand-alone, however, there is a lot of review in the first chapter and a lot of explanation of how I have changed the characters and storylines from JE's. I know some people find that a bit tedious. If you are sensitive to that and don't want the review, feel free to skip reading the first chapter._

_Out of the previous books in my series, the first one is a bit cupcake-y, but the rest are pure babes and develop the relationships between the characters. For maximum enjoyment, I suggest that you read them in the following order:_

_22 Caliber_

_Trigger Happy 23 _

_Morelli's Argument 23.5_

_Ranger 23.75_

_Threatening 24_

_Fixation 25_

_Security 26_

_Sneaky 27_

_Date Night at the Movies 27.1_

_Meeting Maria 27.2_

_The Intervention 27.3_

_Envious 28_

_Dickie's Demise 28.1_

_Mob Matters 28.2_

_Altercation at Giovichinni's 28.3_

_Numbskull 29_

_Toxic 30_

_Obit 31_

_Tamper 32_

_Theft 33_

_Forced 34_

_Fiesta 35_

_Step 36_

_Snatched 37_

_In recognition of the fact that I'm a binge reader and don't personally like to wait for updates, I will try to post twice daily, barring unseen life events._

_Reviews, as always, are greatly appreciated. I have a few people who regularly review for me, and I'd like to thank you for that. Your reviews have given me the confidence to write another story. I appreciate all reviews and try to respond to each and every one. Please note that I cannot respond to reviews that have been posted by guests. _

_Thank you for reading my story. I hope you enjoy it!_

_~ Sarah ~_

**Chapter One**

I rolled over and answered the phone. "Steph?" said my grandmother. "Is that you?"

I settled myself on my left side again and turned off my tablet. As a surprise to Ranger, I'd been teaching myself Spanish. I wasn't doing very well – languages were not my strength – but I could now say some of the most basic words and I think I may even be able to pronounce them right. However, I was starting to get frustrated with my inability to remember words. I was definitely suffering from baby brain.

My name is Stephanie Plum, and I was almost thirty-one weeks pregnant. It had been a tumultuous pregnancy so far. At first, I wasn't sure if I had wanted to be pregnant. But when I started bleeding and almost lost the baby, I decided that I did, in fact, want to be pregnant and I did, in fact, want to have a baby. It was good that I had felt that way, since after finding out that I was bleeding I had to lie down flat on my back for the next ten days. When I stopped bleeding, my obstetrician let me return to my normal routine, but in the next five months I was almost kidnapped several times and actually kidnapped once, shot at several times and hit twice – luckily while wearing a bulletproof jacket – and, more recently, I was choked and my hand was stabbed. The baby has so far remained okay, but my blood pressure rose and I have developed a mild case of preeclampsia, a condition that is characterized primarily by high blood pressure, protein in the urine, and swelling in the hands and face. If it became more severe, a host of other problems could occur, from headaches to problems with your vision, from abdominal pain to infrequent urination. Although it didn't sound serious, it was incredibly so. With preeclampsia present, the stillborn rate went up and, if the baby wasn't miscarried, the baby was often small and had a low birth weight. For me, my organs could be damaged and it could lead to future cardiovascular problems.

To help try to combat the condition, my doctor had put me on long-term sick leave and had instructed me to lie down as much as I could on my left side to take the weight of the baby off my major blood vessels, keep my feet up even when not lying down, drink lots of water, do a half-hour of yoga and other stretches each day, and attend sessions with a psychologist to learn ways of reducing my stress. More importantly, he also prescribed medication. Between it all, we'd been able to limit the increase in blood pressure. My pressure has remained high, but it wasn't as high as it had been when I was in the hospital after the last time that I was kidnapped.

My doctor had been closely monitoring both me and the baby. Every second day I went in for a checkup where he measured my blood pressure, weighed me and listened to the baby's heartbeat. Once a week, I went for ultrasounds, and once every couple of weeks I went for blood tests and my urine was checked for its concentration of protein. On the off days, the staff psychiatrist took my blood pressure so that I could make sure that it wasn't rising. Since the staff psychiatrist worked on Saturdays, between the psychiatrist and the obstetrician my pressure was monitored six days a week.

So, besides going to appointments, I had been spending a lot of time lying down. I was incredibly bored. I was used to being frantically busy, and having so much unstructured time to think wasn't good for me. Hence the Spanish lessons.

I was on leave from two jobs. The first was as a bounty hunter working for my cousin's bail bonds office. When a felon was arrested, they were often given the choice either to wait in jail until their hearing, or to pay bail and be allowed to walk free until their hearing. When they showed up at court, they were given the bail money back. It was a good system and felons greatly appreciated the opportunity to stay out of jail a few weeks longer. It allowed them to tie up their affairs and determine who was going to look after their interests while they were in the slammer. However, felons often didn't have the money to pay that bond – and that's where a bail bonds company came in. The bonding company would pay the bail for the felon in exchange for a fee of fifteen percent of the price of the bond and the donation of some collateral. When the felon showed up in court, the courts returned the bail bond, and the bonding company returned the collateral – but they kept the fifteen percent.

Not all felons showed up for court when they were supposed to though, and that caused problems for the bail bonds company. Without that bail money returned, the bonding company couldn't lend it out to another felon and earn another fifteen percent. To get the money back, they hired a bounty hunter to find the felon and return them to the system. When they were captured and taken back to the courts, the bail money was returned to the bonds company, the felon was given a new court date and the process started again, just with a higher bail bond required for the felon to walk free –which meant a higher fifteen percent, and so on. Many felons found it more profitable to continue to commit their crimes and pay those fifteen percents over and over rather than go to jail.

In exchange for picking up the felons, the bail bonds company gave the bounty hunter ten percent of the price of the bond and kept the remaining five percent of that bonding fee for administrative purposes. Some months could be quite lucrative – but most months weren't, and because of that irregularity in pay I had started working at my second job as a researcher at Rangeman, an elite private security firm that did everything related to security. I had been working there for approximately a year and was now the Research Director, and while I liked learning people's secrets, I also liked the thrill of the chase in picking up skips. For that reason, I spent eighty percent of my time doing research and twenty percent of my time picking up skips.

However, since I had discovered that I was pregnant, I had given up skip tracing and had just concentrated on my job as a researcher. It made sense. Most felons didn't want to be caught and some felons were very aggressive in their desire to remain free. I had been bitten, punched, kicked, choked, stabbed and shot in the line of duty, and I didn't want to take the chance that a felon reacted poorly and I lost the baby.

It was just as well. A year ago I was the only researcher and since then I had grown the department. There were now thirteen researchers, not including me. We were the fastest growing department within Rangeman. Originally, we had only found out information that would allow Sales to target their marketing programs and check into the backgrounds of our clients' employees. In the past six months, however, we had added a number of functions to our arsenal of services that we offered. We now created capture plans for eight bonds companies, and provided research to nine policing organizations, due diligence reviews for one mutual fund company, and background reviews for four real estate offices and six real estate lawyers looking to broker commercial real estate deals. Despite having added staff as quickly as we had, everyone was still overworked. My staff were all working flat-out as hard as they could and I looked forward to the time when I wouldn't have to pay overtime to them – not because I minded paying overtime, but because I would like to see my staff get a break for once.

But then, all staff at Rangeman were working flat out. It didn't help that Rangeman had recently grown and had bought out Pearl Security. That meant we'd expanded from two locations to seven, from four hundred staff to fourteen hundred. Some departments, with the expansion, had become centralized. Research was one of them. Other departments had remained location-specific, like security guards. It had been a good buy for Rangeman and would net the company a lot of money.

I was well familiar with what the purchase would mean to the company as a whole. Ranger, or Ricardo Carlos Manoso, was the sole owner and CEO of the company. He was also my husband of two-and-a-half months and the father of my baby. I had met him five years before. I had been an out-of-work lingerie buyer and could not find work. My cousin Vinnie had the bounty hunter's position open, and although I didn't know anything about being a bounty hunter, I was desperate and I had some very juicy gossip that allowed me to blackmail my way into the position. Ranger was the former bounty hunter. He was in the process of growing his company and couldn't afford the manpower to chase low-bond criminals. However, he felt sorry for me and offered to mentor me, and that was the start of a close friendship. Ranger taught me everything I knew about being a bounty hunter…which wasn't saying much for his training abilities. However, with his guidance I became okay at my job. I wasn't the best bounty hunter in the world. Ranger was. But I also wasn't the worst. I was more like Inspector Jacques Clouseau than James Bond. Despite bumbling around I generally got my felon.

When I met Ranger, I was interested in him. He was everything that I had been looking for in a man. Unfortunately, he didn't appear to agree with me. Despite me putting out feelers and trying to encourage him to ask me out, he didn't. So I started going out with Joe Morelli, a detective on the Trenton police force. We had an on-again, off-again relationship for four years and just broke up a year ago. Through that time, Ranger's and my friendship deepened.

I had since found out that Ranger had loved me all that time, that he had loved me from the first moment that he had seen me. He just hadn't acted on it. He had thought that it would be better for me to be separate from him. Ranger had a secret past, one that put him in a lot of danger. For starters, when he was a US Army Ranger he had been part of the team that had transported the deceased Osama bin Laden to his place of burial. Since the al-Qaeda had wanted to bury him themselves, they were upset with the Ranger team and had targeted each of the members. After a few of the team members had been assassinated, Ranger realized he was in danger so, a year after that mission, Ranger retired and asked the government to set up an alternate identity much like one would have through a witness protection program or a CIA-operative's cover. Ranger, former US Ranger, decorated soldier and former team lead, disappeared and Ranger, graduate of the business program at Douglass College, was born. Everything changed in his history. Even his Social Security number changed. I had once searched for him using our incredibly invasive Rangeman search engine, In-Spect, and as far as I could tell, almost all traces of his former life had been completely erased. The only thing that had stayed the same was his name – but even then, he hadn't been known as Ranger when he was a soldier. That was only something that had appeared after he had retired. His real name wasn't common knowledge and never would be.

Having that alternate identity became more important as around the same time as Ranger developed Rangeman, Ranger also helped create PMC – Private Military Contractors – a company of mercenaries that were comprised of the most-trained soldiers around. They were hired by various governmental organizations from a variety of countries to do all the shit jobs that the governments didn't think were possible. Ranger was known as being the preeminent unit commander for leading teams into enemy territory to do things such as reconnaissance, extractions and attacks. With his Hispanic looks and fluency in Spanish, he had been a natural to work in Central and South America in the War on Drugs. He had done that for three years before it became too dangerous for him to continue, and he switched to training staff for two years before retiring from PMC just four months before and just staying as a part-owner on the Board of Directors. However, through his work with PMC and his missions as a Ranger, a variety of terrorists and drug lords were gunning for him, and that meant Ranger was constantly in danger. He had been concerned about getting together with me, as he'd been worried about spillover of that danger to me – and he would do anything to protect me.

This danger meant a few things for Ranger. First, he hid as much of him as possible. Yes, he had a new Social Security number and was hard to track that way, but he also made it hard to track him in other ways as well. We lived in the Rangeman building. Our credit cards were all corporate cards. Our vehicles were all corporate vehicles. Our phones were all corporate phones. Both his army pension and his dividend checks for PMC were paid to Rangeman as a company rather than to Ranger as an individual and were couched as the purchase of security services. Short of facial recognition, it would be practically impossible to find him, and that was the way he liked it.

Similarly, although we were now together, to protect me Ranger wanted there to be as few formal ties between him and me as possible. I had kept my apartment as my official address and always would. I had kept my last name when we got married and, to tell you the truth, we weren't even formally married. We said the words in front of close family and God, but we didn't register our union with the government. We hadn't even had many friends witness our marriage. Our baby was the closest tie that we would have between us. Even with that, Ranger wanted the baby to take my last name and not register him as the father on the birth certificate. I hadn't wanted to do that though. It was still under discussion between the two of us.

Ranger had a daughter from his first marriage, and she was the reason he didn't want the formal tie to our baby, Tia Rose. Julie, his thirteen-year old daughter, had been kidnapped two years before by someone who wanted to steal Ranger's identity. Of course, he'd kidnapped me as well. The fact that the identity thief had been able to find his daughter had terrified Ranger, and he'd been nervous about Tia being similarly kidnapped ever since. To help protect the baby, we had already selected the person who would be her nanny. Amelia was a nice person, a trained bodyguard, and was someone who loved kids. She had enrolled in an Early Childhood Educator program in preparation for the role and had been greatly enjoying her course work. Ranger and I had thought it was a good sign that she was dedicated to doing the best job that she could in looking after our baby. She still had another year and a half to go in the course, but I could tell already that she'd do well. I had seen her work with my nieces and nephew, and she would be a natural in the position.

In addition to hiring Mellie to bodyguard and look after our baby, we were outfitting Mellie with a special watch. This watch had a tracking device in it, as well as a panic button that could be enacted whenever she was in danger. That watch would be monitored by the control room at Rangeman 24/7. Ranger and I had similar watches, and while Ranger had never had to enact his panic alarm, I'd had to enact mine several times. When Julie came up to visit us this summer, Ranger was planning on giving her a watch as well. We thought she was now old enough to respect everything the watch could do.

Pressing on the panic button told the control room that they should send out an Emergency Response Team to the watch's coordinates immediately. This was a team of highly trained special-ops soldiers who worked for Rangeman. With a sniper, a munitions expert, a medic, and a bomb expert amongst other experts on the team, they were trained to do everything from hostage situations to extractions to attacks and eliminations. Recently, the Trenton Police Department paid Rangeman a retainer to have access to them in the event of an emergency. They had been used a few times for that reason. The men liked it as working for the TPD gave them the ability to keep their skills up to date.

In fact, between the hiring of the ERTs and the research department, the TPD used Rangeman as an extension of their own staff. They deputized us and used our services extensively as consultants to the force. They say they like it because they get the expertise that Rangeman offers without the expense of hiring staff on full-time. Ranger likes it because it gives his staff the ability to spread their wings and is an excellent source of income for us.

But because of the high blood pressure, for the last six weeks I had been off work on sick leave and had spent most of that time lying down. And because we had found that spending time with my family raised my blood pressure, I had been avoiding my family. My mother and father I could handle, and they had been going out on 'dates' and leaving my grandmother at home so that they could come to visit me. My mother tended to call me when my grandmother was having a nap to talk, and between it all I had been able to avoid interacting with my grandmother much. Don't get me wrong – I loved my grandmother immensely. She was a good person. She just had the tendency of creating stories about people, taking what actually happened and embellishing it a little here and a little there to sensationalize it. If she had known that I was suffering from preeclampsia, she would tell everyone that my high blood pressure had resulted in me having a stroke, and for the next year after the baby was born I would get people commenting on how well I had recovered when they realized that I was still able to speak clearly, and I'd get people staring at me to try to see if they could see a droop on one of the sides of my face.

It wasn't just my grandmother that I was keeping my condition from. My sister, Val, hadn't reacted well when I had settled down with Ranger. She'd had a crush on Ranger a few years before, and I had thought that she had gotten over it when she'd married her husband. However, since settling down with Ranger I had found that she had shelved her infatuation rather than gotten over it, and was very jealous that I had settled down with Ranger instead of her. She told me that she had loved him longer than me – which was false – and that she was a better, more worthy person for him to marry than I was. Ranger told me that was false as well. She had told me that she had done everything right and I had done everything wrong, and she couldn't understand how she had ended up married to a bumbling lawyer while I had married a smart and savvy businessman.

I personally could see her point. Like Val, I considered myself to be a failure as a person. Ranger, however, didn't agree. He said that one of the reasons he was attracted to me was for my intelligence. He was the only person who truly thought of me as smart though, so I couldn't see that. He said he was attracted to my determination and dedication to my job, my positive attitude, and my ability to make lemonade out of the lemons of life. He said he was drawn to my love of people and my ability to think of others before myself. He loved my charitable attitude and generosity.

He said there were a host of reasons that he wasn't attracted to Val as a person, but her desire to stay at home and be a housewife was a definite turn-off for him. He definitely didn't think, if women could afford it, that they had to work – after all, one of his favorite sisters was a stay-at-home mom – but he did feel that they had to do something above and beyond looking after kids. He thought that it was healthier for both the caregiver and the child if the caregiver had an outside interest, something that they did that made them feel good about themselves. It could be something as simple as reading and expanding your mind and using your imagination, or it could be something as complex as volunteer work or a paying job. Amelia, our nanny, was doing her Early Childhood certification and, when she finished, she was intending to go to university to take psychology. Ranger's sister, Celia, stayed home with her kids but also wrote and illustrated children's books as a hobby. She hadn't been published formally, but she had created several books for her own kids and her nieces and nephews. Julie had recently told her that her books were one of her most prized possessions, and Celia had started to cry when she heard that. In preparation for baby Tia being born, she had created two garden pictures, with elves hiding beneath the petals of the flowers. They were beautiful and I knew that, like Julie's pictures, they would become some of Tia's most prized possessions as well.

I could see his point. Val lived for her kids, but because her kids were all she had in her life, she put a lot of pressure on her kids to be perfect. Her oldest was determined to be the best in everything she did. Her second-oldest couldn't be the best in everything – that position was taken up by her older sister – so for years she had been determined to be the best horse that she could be. Now that she was ten, she realized that she wasn't a horse and she'd been floundering with that knowledge. She was struggling with her self-identity and felt like a failure for not being the best at anything – which made her feel unworthy of her mother's love. I could understand that. When I was a child, I had believed that I was Wonder Woman, and it wasn't until I jumped off our roof to prove to my sister that I could fly that I had to question my belief.

I don't know how the three younger children would react to Val's dependence upon her kids. They were too young to tell yet. I did think, however, that there would be pushback. Val only had her kids in her life. She didn't have hobbies, she didn't read, she didn't know what was going on in the world, she wasn't interested in anything other than her kids and her only source of pride was on being a good mother. She had recently been forced to expand her horizons and achieve some independence from her kids. Her husband, Albert, was a struggling lawyer who had never won a case. His dismal track record repelled a lot of potential clients and because of his resulting lack of work Val had recently started working outside the home. My mother and grandmother took care of the three babies for Val four days a week. Because Val had never had a job, she didn't have anything to put on her resume, which meant that all she was qualified to do was work in a plus-size apparel store selling women's clothing, despite her philosophy degree from college. She hated her job and said that her feet hurt at the end of the day, and she'd been applying at other companies for something she considered 'more appropriate' for her abilities. She was, and had always been, far more arrogant than she had the right to be.

So between my grandmother's propensity to sensationalize events and my sister's propensity to take jealousy-induced pot shots at me, Ranger and I had decided not to tell them about the preeclampsia. I had been able to avoid them for the past six weeks, and although I felt bad about avoiding them, I was also thankful to not have that pressure put on me.

But my grandmother had caught me this time. "Hey, Grandma, what's up?" I said.

"Am I getting you at a bad time?" said Grandma. "I know how frantically busy you are at work. After all, we haven't seen you in weeks."

"I'm good", I said. "I can take a few minutes out of my day."

"You'll never guess what."

I could tell it was going to be a doozy. My grandmother sounded far too excited. I could just imagine her sitting beside the phone, vibrating in excitement, looking a little like my hamster looked when he knew he was about to receive something good like a raisin. For some reason, when I heard that excitement in my grandmother's voice, I could just imagine her sitting up on her hind legs with whiskers quivering. She didn't actually have hind legs or whiskers, thank God, but my imagination seemed to provide them anyway. "What's going on?" I said.

"I just saw your great-uncle, Uncle Arnie."


	2. Chapter 2

"Uncle Arnie has been dead for three months, Grandma. I'm sure it was just someone who looked like him."

"No, it really was Arnie. I yelled out to him and he stopped walking away, but then he turned and saw me and started to run in the other direction. He always was a better runner than me though, so I couldn't catch up to him."

"Grandma, maybe it was just some random man who wondered why an elderly lady was chasing him. Uncle Arnie is dead. You were at the funeral."

"He had a closed casket, and no matter how much I pried, I couldn't get the casket open." My grandmother enjoyed funerals, but she hated it when there was a closed coffin. Her thought was that she had gotten all dressed up to go to the funeral, and the grieving family should reward that effort by letting her see the body.

Grandma liked funerals so much that she went two or three times a week, whether she knew the deceased or not. She classed it as a good time; I did not. Despite my views, I had attended many funerals for strangers with my grandmother in the hopes that my presence would keep my grandmother under control. However, even with my presence my grandmother frequently got up to mischief. If the viewing wasn't an open casket and she couldn't pry the coffin up anyway, there were times that she had rushed the casket to try to knock it to the floor and smash the wood to smithereens. While that had only worked once, she still attempted it regardless of its lack of success.

"He died in his sleep", I said. "You know that. Remember how Aunt Betty cried at the funeral? She wouldn't have cried if he hadn't died."

"Maybe she didn't know."

"Grandma, you aren't making sense."

"I want you to look into things. I will hire you."

"Grandma, you don't need to hire me. I will look into things for you without being hired by you."

"No, I know that you are busy. What is the going rate for you? I can pay it. I get my Social Security check on Thursday."

"Grandma, I'm not going to charge you. I'll do it in my spare time, outside work hours."

"How much do you charge?"

"Seventy-five dollars an hour and it will likely take me a few hours to do the research", I said.

"You charge seventy-five dollars an hour?" said Grandma. "And you get people willing to pay that?" She sounded shocked.

"To get access to our services, people pay a retainer as well", I said. "They have to pay the retainer whether or not they use our service, just for the opportunity to use our service. It is through paying the retainers that we are able to ensure that we have the staff necessary to do the work when it comes in. We cover our expenses on our hourly rate, but where we make our money is on the retainer. Each retainer is worth thousands of dollars."

"Do I have to pay a retainer for you to look into Arnie's disappearance?"

"No, Grandma. You don't have to pay me at all."

"I just want to find out what happened to him. Betty should know the truth. Here she is, getting ready to leave the state. She is moving to Arizona. She has bought a little apartment on a golf course in an area that reminds her of Arnie and is a place where she feels close to him. What would she do if she found out that he hadn't died?"

"Why would Uncle Arnie do that, Grandma? If he really is alive, there has to be some reason that he has decided to play dead."

"Rumor has it that Arnie had a huge life insurance policy."

"Okay, so we have a motive, but there are a lot of people involved in faking a death. There are the coroner and the funeral home for starters. It would be practically impossible to fake a death."

"But it is still possible."

"How could he do that, Grandma? I mean, he worked in the funeral home business. Faking a death would be hard." My grandmother wasn't the only person in the family who was fascinated by death. Whereas my grandmother was attracted to the macabre nature of death and the social aspect of funerals, my great-uncle had been attracted to the artistry in making the dead appear alive. He had been a mortician for forty-three years before he died.

"It was precisely because he worked in the funeral home business that he could have faked his death. He was friends with the coroners and the funeral home people. He could have had them fake a death certificate."

I sighed. I knew there was no convincing my grandmother without actually looking into the case and, even with looking into it, there was no guarantee that my grandmother would believe me when she had the proof in front of her. In my grandmother's eyes, my Uncle Arnie was alive and that was all there was to it.

"I'll look into it, Grandma, and I'll get back to you. Just give me a few days." I looked at my watch. It was almost time to go to my therapy appointment. I had been meeting with Livy, the corporate psychologist, twice a week to learn stress management techniques. I think that it had been helpful. My blood pressure, at least, hadn't gone up and Ranger and I had been counting that as a success. "I'm sorry, Grandma, but I have to go. I have a meeting in a few minutes and with my pregnancy bladder I have to go to the washroom beforehand."

"I remember what that is like. If you could find out where Arnie is, that would be good. I knew that you'd help. Your mom said that you were so busy right now that she didn't think you'd be able to help, but I said you would. You always were a good girl."

"I'll get back to you." I got off the phone a few minutes later with an irritated sigh. Ranger had asked me not to work and the doctor had put me on sick leave. I could only hope that neither of them thought that I was working if I was investigating my Uncle Arnie's life. He was, after all, family.

I got ready for my appointment with Livy and left the apartment. Ranger and I lived on the top floor of the seven-story Rangeman building. In the building were three other floors of residences for staff in addition to our floor, and three floors of office and training space. Our building, however, was bursting at the seams and so Ranger had bought a piece of land beside our building. Just four weeks ago we had broken ground on another seven-story tower. The new tower would be twice the size of our current tower and would just contain staff residences. After everyone had moved over to the new space, the existing building would be renovated to become a dedicated office space. While we were looking forward to having the increased space, I rather thought that with the growth of our company it might not be long before we needed more space again. I knew that my department would take up at least half a floor on its own, and that wasn't including the other people who were going to be on my floor – those in Cybersecurity, Investigative Services, Onsite Security and Personal Security.

While we were in transition, Ranger had moved all administrative and support services offsite to a location that he'd rented close by. However, since Operations had been growing so rapidly and the two floors that Ranger had dedicated to Operations after the reorganization would not provide the space that we needed, Ranger had been talking with Nate, the Vice-President of Administration and Support Services, about the possibility of keeping their functions offsite just to free up more room for Operations staff. It wasn't something he wanted to do, but Operations was growing faster than Administration and Support Services and we needed the space. I think his intent, after building this building, was to build another seven-story building across the street and have pedestrian bridges built to link the three buildings together.

We were all looking forward to having the increased office space, and the guys were looking forward to having the new residences. When we switched over to the new building, we were increasing the number of Emergency Response Teams from two to four and each ERT member would have his own six hundred and fifty-square foot one-bedroom apartment. Currently, each ERT member was assigned a three hundred-square foot studio apartment. They were also looking forward to having four teams instead of two. Rather than being on-call one week out of every two, they would be only on-call one week out of every four. Since Ranger wasn't decreasing their pay to reflect the decreased hours, they were extremely happy about the proposed changes.

In addition to the four floors of residences for the ERTs, there would be another six hundred and fifty-square foot apartment for the Vice-President of Operations, a three thousand-square foot apartment for our Executive Vice-President and another for our staff housekeeper and her custodian husband, and the penthouse again will be assigned to Ranger and me. Since the new tower would have a larger footprint than our existing tower, our apartment would double in size to seven thousand square feet. It sounded enormous, and our floor plan would include six bedrooms, two offices, a laundry room, a kitchen, a butler's pantry, a dining room, a living room, a family room and a sunroom. Plans included an expansive belvedere to surround the indoor area. I had seen the footprint as the contractors had dug down into the ground for the three levels of basement parking and although it sounded enormous, in actuality it was going to be even more massive than it sounded.

I had never thought that I would live in a large house. My parents lived in a small three-bedroom with one bathroom and, including the bedrooms and bathroom only had seven rooms. The whole house was twelve hundred square feet, and it was the largest house that I had ever lived in – until I moved in with Ranger. His current apartment of thirty-five hundred square feet had seemed astounding to me. I can't even imagine my reaction when I see the new apartment after it has been constructed.


	3. Chapter 3

I arrived at my appointment with Livy and, like my usual habit I had my blood pressure taken by the corporate psychiatrist prior to my appointment. I had been averaging a reading of approximately 137/77, and my obstetrician was pleased that it hadn't increased further. Since it had been, on average, 152/90 when I was in the hospital six weeks before, he was happy that it was as low as it was. As he said, it was still far too high but he'd take whatever decreases that he could get.

Today, however, my pressure was 149/87. "What do you think the difference is?" asked Gabriel, the psychiatrist. "That is the first time that you've increased in your blood pressure since I first started monitoring you."

I groaned. "My grandmother called me."

"You're meeting with Livy now?"

"Yes. Apparently I have a lot to talk about."

Gabriel smiled. "See me after your appointment, and I'll retake your pressure then. I think it will be helpful to see the difference of before practicing stress-relieving techniques and after practicing them. Do you have any time booked with the trainer today?" I had been working with the company staff trainer in the gym. Both a trained physiotherapist as well as a personal trainer, he had been working with me to do some gentle exercises to help relieve stress and to prepare my body for the birth. I had never been one who was keen on exercising, but I actually had been enjoying working out in the gym. It wasn't the sweaty workout that I loved doing with Ranger when he was teaching me self-defense, but it was nice to be able to work my body a bit. Of course, it was just nice to be allowed up off the sofa for a while too. I was very tired of lying down, and I had to keep reminding myself that I would appreciate this time better after the baby was born and I was frantically busy again.

"I don't have an appointment today", I said. "I have appointments with him every Monday, Wednesday and Friday after my obstetrician's appointments."

Livy came to the door and Gabriel turned to her. "After Stephanie's appointment, come knock on my door and I'll retake her pressure. If I am in a session, I will interrupt it for a reading."

"Sure thing", said Livy. She smiled at me as I stood and followed her into her office, and as I shut the door she said, "what's going on that you need your pressure taken twice?"

"My pressure has been pretty steady over the last three weeks, and is much better than it was when I was in the hospital. However, today it spiked up and Gabriel wants to see what it is after my appointment to see if it has come down at all."

"Why do you think that it has spiked up?"

"Just before I came here, my grandmother called. It was the first time that I have talked to her since I was in the hospital. When I was in the hospital, my grandmother was entranced with what was happening to me. She was telling everyone that my nose had broken off from the cold when I was locked in the freezer." I had been kidnapped and locked in a freezer for almost two hours, and by the time that Ranger had blasted through the door with C-4 I was unconscious and my core temperature was 92 degrees Fahrenheit. Ranger had thought that I was dead. He still had nightmares about it.

I had been hospitalized for two days for observation so that the doctor could get two days of blood pressure readings and blood and urine tests done. We had found out a few things during that time. We had found out that I did have preeclampsia but that my organs were all functioning properly still. We found out that my blood pressure was high enough that I needed medication, and we found out that my blood pressure spiked when I had to deal with my family. With my mother it was a minor spike – and after I told her what was going on and found her supportive it didn't have any impact at all upon my blood pressure. But dealing with my grandmother or thinking about dealing with my sister caused huge spikes in my pressure. I knew that I had periodically found them irritating, but I hadn't realized the impact they had made on my wellbeing until we noticed that. That was why I hadn't talked to my grandmother for the past six weeks. I hadn't talked to my sister either and although I would like to talk to my grandmother again, I wasn't sure if I would like to talk to my sister ever again. I just didn't want to hear her constant predictions that Ranger would leave me as soon as the baby had been born.

Ranger had a way of getting back at anyone who hurt someone that he loved. When he found out that my ex had hit me once when I had been married to him, Ranger quietly arranged for him to be arrested for tax evasion. Dickie was now serving a six-year sentence. When he found out that a pedophile was stalking his thirteen-year old daughter, he quietly arranged for the man to be deported to his home country of Honduras and charged there for his actions. He has now been sentenced to twenty years in prison. After some discussion, Ranger and I decided the best way to get back at Val for her spiteful comments and desire to make me cry was to live a loving and happy life, to have the close relationship that Val had always wanted with Ranger, and to let her punishment be the jealousy that she felt. I had been surprised that Ranger agreed to that. He generally liked to see people suffer, and I didn't think he would agree that letting someone live with their jealousy would be an effective punishment. However, to try to appease himself, Ranger said he would hug and kiss me more when he was in her presence. Since he was a fairly demonstrative guy and already hugged and kissed me a lot, I couldn't imagine him being even more demonstrative. However, since I loved his public displays of affection, I didn't think I would mind.

Public displays of affection had never been something I was comfortable with in the past – until I had gotten together with Ranger. It just seemed so natural for me to hug and kiss him in public, and doing simple things like holding his hand when we were walking just somehow seemed right. Despite how natural it felt, there was a big part of me that worried that Val was right and that I was too much of a loser to keep someone as special as Ranger interested long-term. It was a thought process that Livy and I were working on.

"What did your grandmother want?" said Livy.

"She said that she'd seen my Uncle Arnie and she wanted me to trace him to see where he was."

"I can understand why she might want to see him. Has it been a while since she last saw him?"

"Just since he died."

"Pardon?"

I smiled. "My Uncle Arnie died three months ago. My grandmother swears that she saw him and he is committing an insurance scam. I'm not sure if she wants to see him because she wants to see him again or whether it is because she wants in on the action. She had never been particularly close to him though, so my guess is that she wants to see him so that she has a story to tell all her friends."

"Do you think your grandmother actually saw him?"

"I think she saw someone who looked a bit like him but she didn't see him specifically. I was at the funeral. He was pretty dead. My grandmother said that it wasn't an open casket so he might not have been in the casket. I think it was just sour grapes that she hadn't been able to see inside. She has a thing for seeing the dead and she takes offense when she is denied that opportunity."

"So your uncle had a closed casket and your grandmother considers this proof that your uncle isn't really dead. Your grandmother swears that he is still alive."

"Yes, although I don't know how much of this belief is because she has always hated my Aunt Betty or whether it is because she honestly believes that he is still alive. She said that this is information that Aunt Betty should know. After all, Aunt Betty is moving to Arizona in another week, and my grandmother doesn't want to see her happy in her new life."

"Why doesn't your grandmother like your Aunt Betty?"

"I'm not exactly sure, but I think it was because she stole my grandmother's name."

"She stole her name? I don't understand."

"When my grandmother was pregnant with my mother, my Aunt Betty was pregnant with her own baby. She asked my grandmother what she was going to name her baby if it was a girl. My grandmother told her that she was going to name her baby, if she had a girl, Dianne Carol. My aunt must have liked that name. She delivered her baby a month before my mother was born, and she named her baby Dianne Carol. My grandmother was furious."

"What did your grandmother name your mother?"

"Helen Grace."

"That's a pretty name."

"That's what I told my grandmother, but my grandmother said that it wasn't as pretty a name as Dianne Carol."

"I see. Did she have anything against your Uncle Arnie?"

"She said that he had been the favorite child when she was growing up just because he was a boy and the first born. My grandmother was more of a flower child, and my great-grandparents were old-fashioned and fuddy-duds, according to my grandmother. Interestingly, she married someone much like my great-grandparents in attitude. I'm not sure if she married him to try to get into her parents' good books or not, but although my grandfather was staid he laughed a lot at my grandmother's antics. Even so, my grandfather was a moderating influence on her. When he died, my grandmother went wild. She moved in with my parents, which is a constant struggle for my mom and dad."

"Have you seen your parents recently?"

"They come every Friday for dinner. I think they are enjoying the time away from my grandmother just as much as they are enjoying the time with me. It is nice to see them. I've always been close to my father and mother. My father is a pretty silent guy, but my father and I spent hours together when I was growing up watching whatever sports were on the television. It was a quiet togetherness. We've never had to talk about our feelings, but I have always known that my father was there for me. My sister would spend her spare time cooking in the kitchen with my mother, but I would spend the time with my father. I am also close to my mother, even though I am not much like her. For years, my parents were my strength. They are reliable and dependable and solid, and I can always count on them to be there for me. I might have my mother lamenting about the situation or worrying about me, but they have always been there for me."

"What about your mother comparing you to Val?"

"She doesn't mean to do it and, after I called her on it six weeks ago, she's been making a concerted effort not to do it anymore. She said that I'm not a better daughter than Val; I'm just a different one, and that's okay. About six weeks ago we had a serious conversation about the impacts of comparing us and my mother said that she had never meant to do so. And she started calling me baby girl again."

"Baby girl?"

"When I was little, my mother called me baby girl and it made me feel loved and special. As I grew older, she stopped calling me it and I barely noticed the lack. However, with going through this challenge my mother started calling me baby girl again. She apologized a couple of weeks ago and said that it was just slipping out, that she had stopped calling me that because she thought I was resenting it as a teenager to be called a baby. She said, however, that I would always be her baby, no matter how old I got. I told her that I liked being called baby girl and that it made me feel loved. She seemed to appreciate it."

"I can see that. What do you think that you'll call your daughter? After all, I would assume that Tia will have a pet name as well."

I smiled. "The first time Ranger and I saw Tia on the ultrasound, she looked like a peanut. We've been calling her Peanut ever since, and I suspect the name will stick. Besides, then if I have another girl we can call her Jelly, and then we can have peanut butter and jelly."

Livy laughed. "That's cute. What will you call the baby if it's a boy?"

"Toast?"

Livy laughed again.

"Seriously, the chances of Ranger having a boy the third time around are low", I said. "There is a statistical probability of some sort that says that like-gender children are more common than unlike-gender children. I don't know what the probability is, but I know that I told Val that about my nephew before she knew what she was having."

"What did she say?"

"She said my father would like to have a boy. Which is hogwash. My father just wants healthy grandkids. I asked him if he was unhappy that I was expecting a girl, and he started to laugh. He said that he is used to girls and just because they were girls didn't mean that he couldn't spend time with them. He said that he had never been interested in throwing the ball around with us kids, and he knew from when I was a child that he could sit and watch sports with a girl just as much as he could with a boy. He's happy with his granddaughters.

"Despite that, I don't know how close he feels to my sister's kids. I've noticed that whenever he picks up one of the grandkids my sister is right there to take the baby away from him. He likes kids, though, so I'm not sure why my sister does that. I remember when I was a kid sitting for hours snuggled into my dad as we watched something on the television and as he explained to me the rules of the game for whatever sport we were watching. It's kind of sad that he doesn't feel closer to my sister's kids. They're missing out."

"Do you think that you'll keep your kids away from your dad as well?"

"Hell, no. My dad is a good man, and my kids' lives will be enriched knowing him."

"So your grandmother wants you to look into your Uncle Arnie's history to prove that he is really dead? How will you go about that?"

"I'll do it a variety of ways. I'll look at the death certificate. I'll look into Uncle Arnie's and Aunt Betty's finances. I track whatever I can, and I'll hopefully prove to my grandmother that Uncle Arnie is dead once and for all."

"Are you sure that you need to do this? After all, if it is elevating your blood pressure, perhaps it isn't a good thing for you to do."

"I know, but I don't really have a choice. My family needs me. Unless I can convince my grandmother that my uncle has died, she'll drive my mother nuts with her belief that she had seen my great-uncle. My father will start eyeing the rat poison again, and my mother will start eyeing the whiskey bottle."

"Does your mother drink a lot?"

"She used to drink quite heavily but quit cold turkey last December. She hadn't realized that I was pregnant or that anything was wrong with me when I started to bleed, and she put that insensitivity and failure to recognize that something was wrong down to her excessive consumption of whiskey. The day I told her that I was pregnant and that I might be losing the baby was the last day that she had anything to drink."

"Does your father drink?"

"He used to have a glass of wine with dinner, or a beer when he was watching a football or a baseball game. He's not a heavy drinker though, and now that my mother has stopped drinking he has switched to drinking water at dinner to support my mother. Comparatively, my mother used to drink two tumblers-full of whiskey each night, and she looked forward to pouring her first glass each evening. Whenever something went wrong in my life, she wouldn't wait until the evening to pour her first tumbler-full. That meant that it was quite common for my mother to start drinking at noon."

"With that kind of consumption, it makes it hard to quit."

"I admire my mother for doing so. I told her that about a week ago. I told her that I knew it wasn't easy for her but that I admired her for quitting like that. My mother started to cry. She said that it hadn't been easy and she had almost fallen down a few times, but then she'd just have to remember my face when I told her that I might be losing the baby and the realization that she had failed as a mother to be there for me, and it would give her the strength to not buy another bottle of whiskey."

"That's a wonderful tribute."

"So you can see why I have to help my mother out. It would be much more challenging for her to not drink if my grandmother continues to harp upon the idea that my Uncle Arnie might not be dead."

"Can you get someone else to do the searching for you?"

"My staff is so overworked that they can't spare someone to look into the disappearance of my uncle. It's a waste of time."

"Why don't you talk to Ranger about it?"

"I will. I need to, for his sake. It would be bad for me to do it behind his back."

"That's true. How else are things going?"

"They're okay. The baby furniture was delivered yesterday, and Ranger and I are very happy with how it looks. The three-dimensional flowers arrived from Etsy yesterday as well, and the picture hanging strips arrived a week ago. The flowers came in pieces that you had to put together, and I assembled them this morning. They are going to look fabulous on the wall. Ella has washed the crib bedding and Ranger and I are planning on hanging the decorations and putting the crib bedding on the crib tonight. Between it all, by the end of the evening the baby's room will be ready for Tia to be born."

"That's exciting. Is the doctor talking about inducing the baby early?"

"At this point, no. He has been very happy with the stability in my blood pressure and said that it would be good for us to keep an eye on things, but that at this point the baby is doing well and isn't showing signs of distress, and I am doing well and not showing signs of distress. He said there is no reason to pull the baby out early, especially knowing the risks to the baby if we do."

"So it is especially important to get your blood pressure down again."

"I'm hoping that it's just a blip because I had just talked to my grandmother a few minutes prior to having the reading."

"And that's what we'll find out at your next reading."

I paused for a moment, and Livy let me think. She was good at being silent and letting me think about what I wanted to say and letting me consider things so that I was saying what I actually felt, rather than what people wanted to say. I had never realized how much I catered to other people rather than staying true to myself. I smiled often, even when I was sad, just so that I wouldn't worry people. I made jokes, even when I was scared, so that other people wouldn't get scared as well. I fluffed off things, even when I thought they were a big deal, just so that others wouldn't get upset as well. The only person I showed my true self to was Ranger, and even then I hid part of myself from him. I never wanted him to worry. He already worried enough.

When I had started with Livy, I found it hard to talk about my feelings. Yes, I could to a certain degree and I had always been able to talk to Ranger about them in the past. But there was a whole well, deep inside, of feelings that I didn't want to talk about. I didn't even want to think about them, because I prided myself on being an optimistic person and that well wasn't optimistic. In the first couple of appointments that I had with Livy, she had tapped that well and had told me that it was a safe place to talk about those feelings, that she wouldn't look down on me for having those feelings, and that she wanted me to try to always be true to how I really felt when I talked to her. So ever since then I'd been pulling those feelings out and airing them – and letting them dry up and shrivel away. I often cried, but I always felt a little lighter after talking to her. I was dealing with a lot of crap, from my feelings about my sister to my feelings about my ex to my feelings about my job and current lack of. So out of our hour-long appointment, I talked for forty-five minutes and practiced meditation for the remaining fifteen. I was awfully glad that I was seeing her. Livy said that I could see her even after the baby was born, and that she felt we were doing good work together.

I was grateful that she could spare the time. I knew how busy she was, and I told her that I understood if she needed me to step aside and give someone else a chance to be helped by her. She had just smiled and told me that, right there, was precisely what we had to work on. She said I was a valuable person who deserved help just as much as anyone else. After feeling like a lesser person for most of my life, it was a new concept to me.

I had traditionally pumped up my self-image by working my ass off so that I wouldn't feel like a complete loser. To myself I could say that yes, I wasn't as important a person as my sister and yes, I deserved to be hit and yelled at like my ex did, but at least I worked hard at my job and I did a good one. Livy was working with me on the things I had thought as being fundamentally true – that I wasn't as important a person as my sister, that I was a horrible person and that I deserved to be abused. She said I was valuable for being the person I was, and work didn't make me more valuable. It was just one area that I spread my value around, but I was just as valuable a person if I didn't work. It was a concept that I was having trouble understanding, but I was working on it and I hoped that one day I would believe it. I thought that I might be truly happy when I did.

"I'm just scared", I said as tears came to my eyes. "I don't want my blood pressure to go up. I don't want our baby to be in danger. And I definitely don't want to tell Ranger that it has increased."

"Don't you think he has a right to know?"

"Yes, I do. Which is why I'm going to tell him today. But I'm scared as to what this will do to the baby."

"I know. Let's talk about that a bit."


	4. Chapter 4

Gabriel took my pressure again when I left, and with Livy's help I'd been able to reduce it to 146/85 – still higher than I had been for almost the entire six weeks before, but lower than it had been before my appointment. Gabriel shook his head. "I don't know what you talked about with your grandmother, but it must have been a doozy of a conversation."

I smiled sadly. "It was", I said. "She wants me to come off sick leave and investigate something for her. She said that I had done a good job with Uncle Fred's investigation, and she wanted me to do a similar job with Uncle Arnie."

"I don't think that is a wise idea if this is the way that you are reacting to the request."

"That's one of the things that Livy and I talked about."

"Are you planning on telling Ranger about it?"

"Yes. I think he'd like to know."

"Tell him that, if he wants an emergency appointment with me, just to call and I'll work him into the schedule."

"Thanks. I'll let him know." I said goodbye to Livy and Gabriel, and minutes later took the elevator up from the second floor to the fifth. I had been planning on going straight up to our apartment, but I thought it would be a good idea to get the conversation with Ranger over with. After all, it would not be a good thing for my blood pressure to having it hanging over my head. I knew that he wouldn't be happy, and I was dreading telling him.

I walked down into Ranger's office and stuck my head in. He was working on the computer and looked up with a smile on his face. "Hi, babe. How are you?"

"Good. You?"

"Good. Did you have a good appointment?"

"I did. Do you have time for a coffee?"

Ranger put his computer to sleep and stood. "For you, I always have time."

I smiled at him, and we walked together out of his office to the break room. Ranger held my hand loosely as we walked, but I think I was probably holding his hand a little too tightly as he looked at me in concern. "Everything okay, babe?" he said.

"Yeah, essentially everything is just fine."

Ranger assessed my face, and I guess he could see that I didn't want to talk about it with an audience. Just in case he didn't pick up on that, I said, "we'll talk about it over coffee in your office."

"Anything I should be concerned about?"

"Not really", I said. "Just stuff."

When we got to the break room, Ranger took a peppermint tea bag and put it in a mug, and poured hot water over it. He handed the mug to me before pouring himself a coffee.

I looked through the options available for a snack, and selected a bag of apple slices and a container of cheese and crackers. Ranger selected an orange and a bag of trail mix. We carried our snacks back to his office. Ranger shut the door behind us as I placed my food on his conference table. "What's going on?" he said. He looked poised for whatever calamity I was about to throw at him.

"Do you want the bad news or the reason behind the bad news first?"

"Hit me with the bad news before explaining it with the reason."

"The bad news is that my pressure, before my appointment, was 149/87. After my appointment it had decreased to 146/85, but it is nowhere near as good as it has been over the last six weeks."

Ranger didn't look happy and I could understand that. I wasn't either. If my pressure went up, the chances of the baby being stillborn went up as well. Alternatively, the chances of the baby needing to be induced prior to coming to term were much higher, and we wanted to keep the baby in there as long as we could. It was much healthier for her.

"Now hit me with the reason", he said.

I opened up the bag of apple slices and nibbled on one. "My grandmother called me today." Ranger looked frustrated as I told him about Uncle Arnie. Since he had accompanied me to the funeral three months before, he knew that Uncle Arnie had died just as much as I did.

"So why did your grandmother want to tell you about her supposed sighting of Uncle Arnie?"

"Grandma wants me to prove that Uncle Arnie didn't die at all, and instead is just pulling a fast one on the insurance company. She has never liked my Aunt Betty, and she wants to be the one to tell my Aunt Betty that her husband didn't actually die and instead is pretending to be dead. She, I'm sure, is planning on presenting it that my Uncle Arnie is so happy to get away from my Aunt Betty that he is willing to fake his death. If he truly is alive, it will cause all sorts of strife in the family. Hell, even if he is dead, my grandmother will cause all sorts of problems. After all, it won't matter what the research says, my grandmother will tell everyone that she saw Uncle Arnie. You know she has no problems whatsoever in making up stories. This one is tamer than many of the tall tales she has come up with over the years."

"That's true. What do you want to do?"

"I'd like to look into it. I think it will be hard on my mother to hear my grandmother harping on about this, as my grandmother is wont to do, and know that there was nothing she could do to sway my grandmother from her convictions. My mother has been doing so well in not drinking, and I think this will send her over the edge again."

"Do you have to look into it personally, or could you get someone on staff to look into it?"

"I guess I could get someone on staff to look into it. I just feel bad, as everyone is slammed with work and they don't need another search to do, especially one that is so pointless."

"Isn't it better, however, to get someone on staff to do the work than it is to let your blood pressure rise again?"

"I guess so", I said. "I just feel bad for sending them on a wild goose chase."

"Let Miguel use it as a training exercise. He won't mind."

"I know he won't mind, but I still feel bad."

"I know, babe, but this is what you have to do right now. You know as well as I know that it doesn't make sense for either you or the baby to have your pressure become elevated. You've been doing so well at keeping it down as much as you have. I'm proud of you. I recognize that it hasn't been easy. You've been working hard at it, and it's not fair for something as simple as a question over your uncle's death to torpedo your efforts."

Tears came to my eyes. "It seems, no matter what I do, I'm going to end up feeling terrible. I'll feel terrible if I do nothing, as I don't think it is fair to my mother and, after all, family should stick together. I'll feel terrible if I hand it over to my staff, as I recognize that this is a wild goose chase. And I'll feel terrible if I do it myself, as it means that I am putting our baby in danger."

"Let your staff do it, babe. Instead, why don't you spend the afternoon lying down? I saw Ella earlier, and she said that she had most of the baby's things washed and was just about to fold them. She said how much she had enjoyed doing Tia's laundry and she had forgotten how small babies are. Apparently she had to do them in a separate load, with hypoallergenic laundry detergent so nothing causes a problem with the baby's skin."

"If I lie down this afternoon, do you think we could do the exercises and set up the baby's nursery this evening?"

"We can."

"I'm looking forward to being able to go in there and sit in the rocker and dream. I put the flowers together today. They are very pretty and will look nice on the wall. Not as nice as they will on the pallet wall when it has been installed in our new apartment, but it will look pretty on the wall in her existing nursery. The room will look very feminine and welcoming."

"Just as a girl's nursery should be."

"Livy asked us what pet name we were going to use for Tia, and I said Peanut. So she asked me what we'd call our second. I said, if it was a girl, we'd call her Jelly. And if it was a boy, I'd call him Toast."

Ranger smiled. "Toast?"

"I figured it was better than calling him Raisin. People might get the wrong idea if we named him Raisin."

Ranger laughed. "As long as they then don't say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

I smiled. "You are definitely not a raisin. You have large grapes that had shown no signs of shriveling up."

"Thank goodness", said Ranger. "I would hate to be shriveled and desiccated. I'm not old yet."

I stopped and stared at him. "Surely men don't wrinkle there as well", I said.

"No, but I've heard your sack grows larger and your penis size shrinks a bit."

"Luckily, you have a lot of room to shrink before you get small." I paused. "Of course, according to Lula you are probably quite small to start off with."

Ranger choked. "Why does she figure that?"

"She always thought you were quite big and was constantly asking me for confirmation, but with fathering two girls she has decided that you are quite small. She says that female sperm are marathoners and are prepared to go the distance whereas male sperm are sprinters and die out early, and this means that those with short penises have female children whereas those with long penises have male children. I didn't correct her, since I didn't think that you wanted me to talk about your penis length."

Ranger looked at me with his mouth open. "She actually thinks I have a small dick?"

"She said she couldn't understand it, and that she had always thought of you as having a big wanger. However, she seemed pretty set in her thinking that you have a small one now. I'm just as happy. It means that she has stopped talking about trying to get in your pants or, at least, having a little look-see."

"She wants to get in my pants?"

"Most women I know don't care about a man's penis size. After all, it isn't what size the man is that makes sex satisfying for the woman. It's what the man does besides the actual act of putting tab A into slot B. However, size does matter to Lula. I don't know if it is because of the trauma she underwent or not." Lula was a former hooker and had been for several years before she had been so abused by a john that she could no longer ply her trade. "I often think, with her injuries, that she has lost sensitivity and someone small doesn't have the size that she needs to achieve satisfaction."

"I can see that. She really would like a little peek?"

"Oh, yeah. She is envious of the fact that my grandmother saw you a couple of years ago, and has asked my grandmother to describe you several times." My grandmother walked in on Ranger when he was having a shower once, and she said it was the one highlight in her life that she'd most like to repeat. "Lula has asked me as well, but whereas I refuse my grandmother satisfies her curiosity quite willingly. I have noticed though, that you are getting bigger over time in my grandmother's memories. The way she describes you now, you have a wanger of a size similar to Ron Jeremy. She says that you're just better looking."

"What do you think?"

"I think I wouldn't be happy being with a man as large as Ron Jeremy, so I am glad that you aren't as large. Honestly, it looks like it would be painful having sex with him. However, you aren't small either and I am happy about that. To me, you are the perfect size. You're large, but not obscenely or painfully large. Even better, despite your size you aren't arrogant and instead take the time to satisfy me in more than a slam, bam, thank you ma'am sort of way." I looked at him, and he was staring at me in bemusement. "Don't worry. To me, you are perfect. And to my grandmother, you are more than perfect." I paused. "No wonder Val wants you as desperately as she does."


	5. Chapter 5

A new staff member stopped me as I entered the Research department. "May I help you?" she said.

"Hi", I said. I stuck out my hand to shake hers. "I'm Stephanie." She ignored my hand.

"Okay? Are you lost? How did you get up here?"

"Let me try this again. I'm Stephanie Plum."

"Okay? Is that supposed to mean something to me? You aren't supposed to be here. I don't know how you got in, but you should get out the same way as you got in." Her hip stuck out and she put her hands on her hips in attitude.

"You're very new, aren't you?"

"What's it to you, bitch?"

"I'm just going back to talk to Miguel."

"You are not allowed to do that. Miguel is a busy man. He doesn't need to be talking to people off the street."

I sighed. "Trust me, he won't mind."

"I'm calling security. You shouldn't be here. This is a closed office building. You aren't just allowed to walk anywhere you want."

"I'm sorry – what is your name?"

"Ava. Ava Bigoni."

"It's nice to meet you, Ava. I'm going back to see Miguel now."

"I'm calling security."

I snorted. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you." I turned around and continued to my office, where I had encouraged Miguel to set up shop. Prior to him taking over my office, he and Dirk – the other Manager of Research – had been sharing a space. They, like me, were looking forward to when the office reorganization was complete. They would each be getting their own office when that happened.

I looked around the area as I walked towards my office. Staff didn't have a lot of extra room, but they seemed to be doing well despite the close quarters. That was good, since I didn't think there would be much extra space when the renovations happened. When we had originally been talking about and designing our renovated space, my staff was approximately half the size that it was currently and I knew, with the way that Sales was promoting us, our staff quotient would just increase over time.

I walked into my office and Miguel popped to his feet with a grin on his face. "Chica! It's so good to see you! How are you feeling?"

"Not bad. Today was the first day my blood pressure has been raised in the last six weeks."

Miguel immediately looked concerned. "Why has it become elevated?"

"That's what I've come to you for. I have a favor to ask."

"Anything. You know that."

Dirk stuck his head in my office. "Hey, I thought I heard your voice", he said with a grin. He came and sat on the other chair in front of Miguel's desk. "How are you doing?"

"Not bad, all things considering."

"Steph was just saying that she had a favor to ask us", said Miguel.

"Anything", said Dirk. "How can we help?"

"My great-uncle, Uncle Arnie, died three months ago. My grandmother thinks that she has seen him." I explained about my grandmother's 'sighting' and the problems she was creating with this so-called knowledge. "So, you see, the only way that I can deal with this is by doing the research. However, just thinking about dealing with my grandmother is elevating my blood pressure and although Ranger understands why I need to do this, he's concerned about the impacts upon me. Ranger and I were wondering if I could get a person on staff to do the research for me."

"No problem", said Miguel. "I'll do the work personally and should have some answers to you by the end of tomorrow."

"Thanks, Miguel. I know it is a bit of a wild goose chase, but it is the only way that I'll be able to shut my grandmother up."

"We don't mind. It will be a bit of a different research project than many we do."

I laughed. "That's true. How is work going?"

"Good. Busy. I'm looking forward to when you get back. I'm trying to do a good job for you but what you make look easy isn't exactly as easy as you make it seem. Dirk has been helping me." He looked up in surprise. "Hi, Ralph. How are you?"

Ralph stuck his head in my office. "Ava told me that you have an intruder?" He smiled at me. "Hey, Steph. I haven't seen you in a while. How's the baby?"

"She's hanging in there, thanks, Ralph. How are you? How is your daughter?"

"I'm good, thanks, and my daughter is entering kindergarten in September. She's growing fast. You'll find this when you have your own. You won't know where the time has gone." He turned to Ava, who was skulking around behind him. "Where is the intruder?" he said.

"That bitch right there", she said as she pointed to me. "I told her to get out, and she refused."

Ralph's mouth dropped open, and I looked at Miguel and Dirk. They looked similarly gobsmocked. After a moment of silence, Ralph said, "you don't know who this is, do you?"

"She said her name was Stephanie Plum." For the first time, she started to lose the attitude and look a little uncertain of herself.

"Yes", said Ralph. "The head of your department."

"That's not true", said Ava. "Miguel is the head of this department."

"I'll leave you to figure out this misunderstanding", said Ralph. "Call me if you need something."

"Why did you leave your post?" I asked Ralph.

"Ava said that it was an emergency and that there was a madman loose in the research department. I didn't even use the elevator. I ran up the stairs to get here faster."

"What?" said Ava. "I still think that she is a madman. She's claiming to be the head of the department."

Ralph snorted and turned around. "I don't want to leave reception unmanned for long", he said. "A madman might come in off the street." I laughed as he left.

"I've explained this to you several times, Ava", said Miguel with a sigh. "I'm the acting head. Stephanie is the director. She just happens to be on sick leave at the moment." He turned to me. "Do you have a few minutes to meet everyone? There are a lot of new people here, and it would be good to take a moment to meet everyone before you go home again."

"That sounds great", I said.

Miguel turned to Ava. "Could you please tell everyone that we're having an impromptu staff meeting in fifteen minutes in the boardroom? And close the door on your way out."

She shut the door, again with attitude, and I looked at Miguel. "Good luck with that one. How long has she been working here?"

He groaned. "A week. I've been pleased with most of our new hires, but I haven't been pleased with Ava", he said. "She is too young and not dedicated enough to her job."

Dirk laughed. "She's dedicated to you though", he said.

I looked at Miguel, and his face flushed. "She seems to want to start a relationship with me, and she is always finding reasons to come into my office to see me. Her work is okay, but she is getting jealous every time I talk to another woman. I want to let her go, but I only have her treatment of me as an excuse and I don't think that is a strong enough reason."

"It's sexual harassment, Miguel", I said. "And in this company, sexual harassment is always grounds for dismissal."

"Thank you", said Dirk. "I've been saying the same thing to him."

Miguel didn't look too convinced. "Think of it this way", I said. "How would you react if it was a guy doing the same thing to me?"

"That's true", said Miguel. "I wouldn't react well."

"That's right. Mixed with her attitude that she exhibited when I showed up, and I think you should get rid of her."

"What did she do?"

"She challenged me, gave me attitude and, even when I had introduced myself to her and explained that I was going to see you, she called me a bitch and told me that she was going to get security to throw me out. I was pleased that she was so protective of you, but I wasn't pleased with the attitude she displayed while she was doing it. If it had truly been an intruder, there still were more professional ways of handling things."

"So you think I should get rid of her?" said Miguel. His face brightened.

"Honestly? Her work would have to be exceptional for me to want to retrain her in the niceties of working in an office. And maybe even then I don't think that I would put up with that bullshit for too long. I think you are perfectly within your rights to let her go, and with doing so prior to the end of her probation she doesn't have a leg to stand on if she wants to be an ass about it and try to drum up a legal response."

"Dirk and I were bouncing it around this morning. I'd like to let her go, but I didn't know if I was being unfair to her."

"Miguel, she called me a bitch when I came on the floor. That isn't something that can be overlooked. You would never do something like that, and neither would Dirk. She isn't Rangeman quality."

"How do I go about firing someone?"

"Talk to Justine in HR. She's the Recruitment and Retention Coordinator. She'll be able to help you."

"Do you have a minute to talk about other issues?" said Dirk.

"Sure", I said. "We have another ten minutes or so until our staff meeting."

"I have one person on staff who thinks that he isn't paid enough, and he is trying to cause a ruckus with the other team members", said Dirk.

"Do some research and figure out what the salary range in typically for the position. Print off a copy of that information, and print off the contract that he signed. Call Justine in on a meeting with him and talk about the average salary, and talk about the fact that he agreed to the salary he is paid when he signed his contract. Tell him that, if he doesn't like it, he is welcome to leave Rangeman and find another job. However, we will not be raising the salary range on the position he is filling."

"Okay."

"I have someone who wants to start a union in the company", said Miguel.

I snorted. "As if Ranger would ever let this become a unionized shop."

Dirk and Miguel laughed. "That is actually pretty funny", said Dirk.

"How do you want me to handle it?" said Miguel.

"Tell them the truth", I said. "If it became a union shop, we would be joining the same union as the TPD, and their salaries are much less than ours, their benefits aren't as comprehensive, and their pension plan isn't as generous. Additionally, any person who is in a union has to pay union dues. It may only be fifty dollars a paycheck, but that's six hundred dollars a year that could be going into their pockets instead. Introducing a union to Rangeman would disastrous for the staff. If they want to work in a unionized shop, they can apply to the TPD."

"We have one guy on staff, an accountant, who thinks that he's sex on a stick. He started going out with one of the other researchers shortly after she started, and he convinced her to sleep with him. Now he is telling everyone what she did and how he rated her. I found her crying at her desk after hours yesterday", said Dirk.

"Again, that is sexual harassment and is grounds for dismissal. Talk to Justine and let him go. We don't want anyone on staff who isn't a team player, and he doesn't sound like a team player to me."

"He was one of the people who moved up here from the Pearl Security offices." Pearl Security was the company that Ranger had just finished purchasing ten weeks before. "I feel bad about firing him when he has just moved cities."

"I understand that", I said, "but he isn't Rangeman quality. We don't accept that behavior from anyone, and the woman shouldn't have to put up with that sort of treatment. I'm sorry if he doesn't like the consequence associated with his actions, but his actions were to sexually harass and verbally belittle another employee. That was his choice and no one made him do that. However, such an action does not speak of integrity and honor, and we only want honorable people who have integrity, a sense of compassion, and the willingness to work hard on staff. He doesn't make the cut. I would let him go and then talk to the woman to tell her that he was let go, and that you want her to report on any problems associated with the man, whether it is other men – or women – talking about her, or any further interactions she has with the man. That kind of behavior is inexcusable."

"I wish you were coming back to work", said Miguel. "I have decided that I like sharing the position of second-in-command, but I don't really like being in the top position. You are so much better at it than I am."

I smiled. "I don't think I'm better at it. I just had two great people to support me and a much smaller staff. You only have one person supporting you and the staff size has doubled. How has the training been going?"

"It's been okay. The people who have come up from the Pearl locations are amazed at everything that can be done on In-Spect. They, except for that one that we just talked about, are good people. They are excited about their new ability to find out information and the more they find out about the company, the more they are happy that we have bought them out. We've had a lot of people to train over the last ten weeks, but I think we are at the right number of people for the incoming work that we currently have, and the staff is turning into a good group of people. I think we got lucky when we hired everyone. With hiring so fast, it was quite possible to make many more mistakes than I think we did. Sure, we have had a few duds, but generally we have a talented team."

"That's good. Feel free to fire the duds. We are trying to develop a strong team of dedicated professionals, and anyone that doesn't fit that description should be let go." I looked at Miguel and Dirk. "Now is it time for our staff meeting?"

We stood up, and Dirk and Miguel both gave me a hug. "I'm really glad you came down", said Miguel. "If it weren't for the fact that you've been instructed to lie down as much as you have, I would have suggested that you come for lunches with us. Dirk and I have missed you."

Tears came to my eyes as I smiled. "Thanks, guys", I said. "I've missed you too."


	6. Chapter 6

When Miguel and Dirk and I exited the office to go to the staff meeting, Ava was standing outside my office. She was glaring at me, and I knew that she had seen Miguel and Dirk hug me through the windows. I tightened my eyes at her. She didn't get it, but then I decided that I was over it. She was soon going to be let go anyway, so I wasn't going to waste any time worrying about her. After all, wouldn't that be what Livy recommended?

Ava tried to catch up to us and walk beside Miguel as we walked to the conference room, but Miguel angled his body away from hers and positioned himself so that I was between him and Ava. He looked at me and smiled, and I shook my head with a grin. I rather thought that he would be happy to let Ava go, and would personally want to be in on the firing.

When we entered the board room, a couple of people called out a hello to me. Most people, however, didn't know who I was. Miguel introduced me and told everyone that they might be seeing me around a bit while I was off on sick leave, and then off on maternity leave. He turned the floor over to me.

"If you're on sick leave, why the hell are you here? You don't look sick", said Ava in a loud voice.

I ignored her. "Hi", I said. "I know some of you, and I look forward to meeting and getting to know the rest of you over the next year. For those who want to know what is going on, I am thirty weeks pregnant and will be off work until four months after the baby is born, or to the end of my maternity leave. For the remainder of the baby's first year, I will largely be dividing my time between working in the office and working from home, but you will definitely be seeing me around. From everything that I have heard, you all have been doing good work and I look forward to working more closely with you in the future. I hope, if I see you around in the building, that we will have a chance to have a coffee together and properly meet each other. Does anyone have any questions for me?"

"Yes", said Ava. In a loud voice, she said, "how are you able to work from home? Our programs won't let you work remotely."

"There are a few select people who have remote access", I said. "I'm one of them."

"That's not fair", said Ava. "I'd like the option to work from home as well."

"That may be", said Miguel, "but we don't offer the ability to work from home to people as a general rule. However, there are a handful of people in the company that have that ability. Stephanie, like Ranger, is one of them."

"Yes, but Ranger is the President of the company. She's just a nobody", said Ava.

I smiled, but what I really wanted to do was bash her over the head with a stout wooden club. She was saying all the things that I thought about myself, and she was erasing all the good feelings I'd had with Miguel's and Dirk's obvious happiness at seeing me.

I could feel Miguel and Dirk bristling. "Ava, we will talk about this later", said Miguel.

"Seriously, who is this bitch?" said Ava. "She walked into this department like she owned the company."

Dirk choked and I smiled. Miguel geared up to say something, and I put my hand on his arm. "It's okay", I said. "I understand that she is ignorant. I don't take offense to it."

Everyone sat up straighter and looked to the door, and I turned to see Ranger walk in. "Who is a bitch?" he said. His quiet voice showed his anger, and I could understand why. Ranger didn't approve of that sort of abuse in anyone on his staff.

There was a silence, and Ava looked around the room. "The pregnant one", she said. "She's the bitch."

My face turned red as I looked at Ranger, and Ranger stared at Ava for a moment. Miguel and Dirk also looked at Ranger, and we waited for him to get his temper back under control. To most people he would have appeared to be calm and controlled, but I knew differently. So did Miguel and Dirk. All his little tells were there. The tautness to his shoulders. The rigidity to his body. The look of 'not happy' on his face. Ranger looked at me and smiled, then turned back to face Ava. "You can refer to that pregnant one", he said quietly, "as Stephanie, Ms. Plum, Director, Mrs. Manoso, or even Mrs. Ranger, but you cannot refer to her as the bitch. In fact, referring to anyone as a bitch here at Rangeman is neither professional nor acceptable. Do I make myself clear?"

The room was silent. Ranger turned to Miguel. "I'm taking Steph back to the apartment and tucking her in for a nap. I'll call you in about twenty minutes."

"Sure, Ranger."

"Babe?" said Ranger. He held his hand out for me.

"It was nice meeting everyone", I said. I smiled and waved at them, then put my hand in Ranger's and walked out of the research area.

We got to the elevator and Ranger turned to me. "Talk to me. What the hell just happened in there?"

"Ava, the girl who called me a bitch, stopped me from walking on the research floor and told me that I didn't deserve to be there. She called security when I insisted on seeing Miguel. I ignored her, and Miguel and Dirk and I had a good meeting. It was great to see them again. We always have a good time together, and it was nice to take a few minutes to just relax with them. Ava really did call Ralph, and he came up to the office to see what the danger was. He said hi and was wondering how we were doing. He said that his daughter is entering kindergarten in September." I stopped to take a breath.

"Go on." His shoulders were still rigid and I could tell that he was still angry.

"Miguel and Dirk closed the door to the office and we had a nice time yapping." I could feel my face flush in embarrassment. Tears came to my eyes. "They made me feel good about myself, and valued for what I could contribute. It was good, you know?" I paused and swallowed back the emotion. "We talked about some staffing issues that they were having – one of which was Ava's aggressive and inappropriate treatment of both me and Miguel – and then we opened the door and walked into the conference room. But as we were opening the office door both Miguel and Dirk gave me a hug and told me how happy they were to see me, and Ava saw. She has a crush on Miguel and doesn't understand that I don't have designs on him."

"So she thinks that you are making moves on Miguel?"

"Apparently she thinks I'm cheating on you."

He sighed. "I'll deal with it."

I tiptoed up and kissed him on his cheek, then cuddled into him. "You don't have to deal with it. Miguel and Dirk and I have already dealt with it. She will be fired later today. There is the inappropriate sexual harassment towards Miguel, the wildly inappropriate greeting on the floor, and the inappropriate questions and referring to me in the staff meeting as the bitch. Miguel was putting up with the sexual harassment, but now that he knows of the other problems he is no longer willing to put up with that harassment any longer. It's funny. I was willing to put up with her disrespect, but Miguel and Dirk were upset about that. However, I was upset about her treatment of Miguel and he was willing to put up with that."

He slung his arm over my shoulder and snugged me into his body. "You're a good team."

I smiled. "Yes, we are. They are good friends as well as employees, and I feel lucky to be able to work with them."

He kissed me on the top of my head as Ava and another girl came out to the elevators. The other girl smiled at us. "Are you really Ranger's wife?" she said.

I smiled. "Yes." After only ten weeks of being married, I still got a thrill whenever someone referred to me as Mrs. Ranger.

"And you're really the Director of our department?"

"Yes."

"Probably slept her way into the position", said Ava.

"That's it", said Ranger. "Ava, follow me." His voice was deadly quiet, and the other girl was smart enough to look nervous. Ava was not. Ranger turned around and walked back through the research department to my office and, as he passed by Miguel's and Dirk's office, he called Dirk in.

There were about thirty eyes on us as Ranger shut the door. He turned to Dirk and Miguel and said, "I'm sorry if I am jumping the gun, and I'm sorry if I am stepping on toes. However, I need to deal with this."

"That's fine with us, Ranger", said Miguel. He smiled with relief. He knew what was coming.

"Ava, your behavior is appalling. You are harassing Miguel, and you harassed Stephanie both when you thought that she wasn't anyone other than someone wanting to speak to Miguel as well as when you found out that she was your boss. Any of those times that you abused either Miguel or Stephanie are grounds for dismissal. You are both extremely inappropriate as well as not Rangeman quality. I'm sorry, but I am letting you go with just cause. Your firing is effective immediately. Dirk will help you clear your desk and will walk you out. Your final pay stub will be mailed to you."

Ava looked at us, her mouth hanging open. "But you can't fire me. You just hired me a week ago." She looked a bit panicked.

Ranger shrugged. "I'm sorry. We have a high standard for employees, and you don't meet it." He turned to Dirk. "Dirk, if you could walk Ava out?"

"Gladly", said Dirk. He stood up and grabbed Ava's elbow. He walked with her out the office door as Ranger turned to Miguel.

"Okay, tell me about the sexual harassment", he said.

"She just seems like she has a thing for me. She must come into my office to see me twenty times a day. With other people, I might see them once a day. She often finds an excuse to come and hang over my shoulder to show me something, and she takes every chance she can get to rub her breast in my face. Every time I talk to another employee, especially a female employee, she gets jealous and does something to upset or embarrass them after I have finished talking to them. She has spread rumors and caused problems. Last night she refused to leave work until I left. When I realized that she was waiting for me, I had Dirk walk her out. I don't want to take the chance that she follows me home. And the worst part is? She has only been here a week. I had been hoping that the problems would go away if I treated her with professionalism, but they haven't so far."

"You shouldn't have to put up with it, Miguel", said Ranger. "I'm sure Steph has already said this, but that sort of thing is not appropriate behavior and, if it was a man doing it to Steph, there is no way that you would let that continue. Similarly, we aren't letting you be harassed either."


	7. Chapter 7

By the end of the day, Miguel had gotten back to me. "I hate to tell you", he said, "but your grandmother might have something."

"What!?"

"I have found Arnie's death certificate, and I have found the bill they paid the funeral home. I have found the payment of the life insurance policy, and the policy has paid out an enormous sum of money – well over two million dollars. Apparently, your uncle increased his policy a year ago."

"Okay, so why do you think my grandmother is right? After all, I attended the service myself. My aunt was devastated by my uncle's death."

"Your aunt found your uncle and didn't call the paramedics. Instead, she called the coroner directly and the coroner came to pronounce him dead. He then called the funeral home to come pick him up."

"So, if my uncle was alive, the coroner and the funeral home would have to be in on the ruse."

"That's true, and both the coroner, Larry Glease, and the Pleasant Heaven Funeral Home owner, Stan Adams, were each given a hundred thousand dollars after the life insurance policy was paid out, which seemed to me to be very odd. So that led me to delving into Betty's and Arnie's finances. The same amount of money has been taken out of their account now as there was in the past, which is also unusual considering there is only one person in the house now instead of two. Your aunt has already bought a place in Arizona – your aunt and uncle bought it prior to your uncle dying. But interestingly, money has been taken out of your aunt's and uncle's accounts in both Trenton and Arizona, and sometimes it is done on the same day two days in a row, which makes me think that it wasn't that your aunt just travelled to and from Arizona that day. So that made me look into the surveillance cameras at the ATMs that were used. I'm sorry, Steph, but your grandmother is right."

"It's not possible."

"I don't know how it happened, but your uncle is alive."

"Are you sure?" I didn't know why I was asking. Miguel was a careful person and wouldn't have told me that if he wasn't sure.

"As far as I could tell, just going from his DMV picture, it's the same man. I'll send over the report that I have created, and include the pictures that I have been able to capture from the ATM surveillance cameras. You'll better be able to judge if it is the same person."

I sighed. "This is going to rock my family."

"What are you going to do?"

"As far as I can tell, this is now a criminal case. I will tell my grandmother that I haven't done the research yet and hand everything over to Morelli. He's the best person to track this down."

"And just keep your grandmother hanging?"

"I have to. If my grandmother knew this information, she would blow apart any investigation to the point where it would be impossible to pick up the pieces. She's not known for her subtlety."

"I'm sorry, Steph. I know this isn't the answer that you were expecting."

"No, it wasn't", I said. "But if he was committing insurance fraud, I'm glad I know about it. It's not right."

"True."

"Thanks for doing that work for me, Miguel."

"No problem. How is your blood pressure now?"

I laughed and said goodbye, but I thought that question was quite appropriate. I could feel my blood pressure spiking as I lay there.

I retrieved my computer and clicked into my mail program. I opened the attachment that Miguel had sent me and read the file contents and looked at the pictures. There was no question about it. Either my uncle was alive or someone was pretending to be my uncle, and since I couldn't imagine why anyone would pretend that, I had to believe that my uncle was alive.

I was deep in thought as Ranger came into the apartment, and he walked back into the den and sat on the edge of the sofa. He gave me a kiss. "How are you doing?" he said.

"Good", I said. "Miguel just found proof that my grandmother was right though. My uncle is alive."

"What?" said Ranger. He stared at me.

"Yeah, that was my reaction too."

I turned my computer so that he could read the report, and Ranger quickly scanned through the various pieces of information. He looked at the surveillance camera pictures. "What do you think of this?" he said. "Do you think that your uncle is actually alive?"

"It seems pretty obvious to me that he is", I said. "You never knew my uncle, but he had hurt his leg in the war and it had never healed properly. He walked with a noticeable limp, a little hop and jump with every step he took. I looked at the surveillance video and he'd had that same limp in the video. What we really need, more than anything else, is to exhume the body to see if my uncle was in the casket. However, if my aunt was in on the ruse, she won't agree to it."

"That would be something that would have to go through the TPD anyway", said Ranger.

"I was just about to send this report to Morelli, and to phone him to talk to him about the possibility that my uncle is alive."

"Can you remind him that he is taking you to your ultrasound tomorrow?" Since I had been attacked twice on the way to my doctor's appointments in the past few months, Ranger and Morelli had decided that I shouldn't attend any appointments without an escort. However, Ranger couldn't spare the time for three appointments per week, so he took me to one appointment, Morelli took me to one appointment, and Amellia took me to one appointment. Ultrasounds were generally done on Fridays, and Ranger generally took me to my Friday appointment. However, with Friday this week being Good Friday, the ultrasound was going to be done on Wednesday, and Morelli had been very excited about the potential of seeing the baby. When he had heard the sound of the baby's heartbeat in the first doctor's appointment that he had taken me to, I had thought that he would start to cry. I knew that he'd be fascinated by seeing Tia on the screen.

"Somehow, I don't think that he'll forget", I said with a smile. I thought it was nice that Joe was as excited about the baby as he was. With being my ex-boyfriend, he might have wished to be as far away from the baby as possible. Since I was the one that had broken the relationship off, he could have been resentful or even angry. However, he had told me that he understood why I had broken it off and, now that he'd seen the love that Ranger and I had for each other, he understood that this was the best thing for me – and he loved me enough to want the best for me. Now that he'd gotten used to the idea, he didn't take offence at knowing that he wasn't it. I was happy. After Ranger, Joe was my closest friend and that had been the whole reason that we had lasted as long as we had. When I broke up with him, I made it clear that I valued our friendship and I wasn't willing to let it go. It was a bit of work at first, and at first it was a little uncomfortable. But Joe says that I am also his best friend and he is thankful, I think, to be included in Ranger's and my life as much as he is. He frequently came over for dinner and has developed a good friendship himself with Ranger. He has asked that, when the baby is born, whether she could call him Uncle Joe. Ranger and I thought that was a good idea. I knew that Joe would be a good uncle to her, and I could see that he already loved her very much.

The ultrasound the next day would be the first time that Joe had seen her on the screen, and I hoped that she would do something cute like suck her thumb when it was being done. I was excited about sharing it with him, as I knew how much it would mean to him. Two weeks ago, I'd had Amelia take me to the imaging lab, and she had started to cry when she saw the baby on the screen. I think Amelia was looking forward to the birth just as much as Ranger and I were.

Amelia had been doing well in her lessons in Early Childhood Education. She had just finished her exams the week before, and she had said at the time that she had thought that she had done well but that she wasn't entirely sure. However, she had phoned me that morning and was excited to tell me that her lowest mark that she had gotten on her courses was an eight-seven, and her highest mark was a ninety-six. I was so incredibly proud of her.

Amelia could use all the positive events in her life that she could get. She was a lovely person who had a terrible self-esteem. She was a former soldier who got out of the army when she started to suffer from PTSD. She came to Trenton and tried to live on her army pension as she looked for a job. But her PTSD was extreme and she could not find a position, and her army pension wasn't large enough to both provide a roof over her head as well as provide enough food to eat. Out of desperation, she stole a bag of hamburger buns – and was caught. She saw that as being a good thing. Even though she didn't want to go to jail, she had been looking forward to having three square meals a day.

However, a friend heard that she was in jail and arranged with my cousin's bail bonds company to pay Amelia's bail. Once Amelia was sprung from the slammer, though, her friend failed to provide any further support and Amelia once again didn't have enough money for food.

Starving, Amelia forgot her court date. Rangeman staff picked her up and were so impressed with her acceptance of her situation and her willingness to cooperate with them, and her remorse over her actions that they told Ranger – and Ranger went to see her in jail. He interviewed her and offered to pay her bail and give her work as a bodyguard, on the condition that she attend weekly therapy sessions, and that she go both to nutritional counseling as well as physical training. She was so grateful for Ranger giving her a job that would allow her to support herself that she started to cry. So Ranger paid her bail and hired her. She had been a great hire and a great team member. Amelia and I had recently gone to court to talk to the judge about her charges of theft, and the judge had awarded her ten hours of community time. Amelia had decided to spend that time working for Ase, an afterschool club for kids between the grades of one and twelve that was offered to all students in Trenton for free. The program was a good one, and was in fact one that Ranger had helped start, and Amelia had greatly enjoyed her time working there. She was finished her community hours but had decided to work in the program until the end of the school year. It was a decision that Ranger and I supported. Ranger and I had been considering trying to arrange our lives so that Amelia could continue in the role in Ase after the baby was born as well. Just like Ranger and I believed that it was healthier for all mothers or fathers to have an interest outside of their children, we also believed that other caregivers should also do things that made them feel fulfilled and valued for who they were beyond the kids that they were looking after. Volunteer work would be excellent for Mellie's self-confidence, and her decision to do volunteer work would serve as an excellent example for Tia to see as she grew up.

Amelia, despite everything that she had going for her, did not have a great self-esteem. Her parents had died when she was a child and her aunt and uncle had taken her in. They had never wanted to be parents though, and had treated her with neglect and indifference. Amelia escaped to the army, but then became mentally ill and, when she retired, was ignored by her friends. She looked down on herself just as much as others did, and having the Rangeman team behind her was astounding to her. She hadn't had that much support for her personally since her parents had died.

She said, with all the help that we had given her, her nightmares came less frequently. Instead of plaguing her every time she slept, she often now had dreamless nights. She saw the psychiatrist once a week and said that her discussions with him had been helpful. Tank, our Executive Vice-President of Operations, had also taken her under his wing and had been teaching her self-defense. He said that she was doing well in her lessons and that he had been enjoying spending the time with her. He had, in fact, started dating her about six weeks ago and, judging by the propensity of Amelia to blush whenever I said Tank's name, I thought that things were going well.

Ranger and I were confident that Amelia would become a good addition to the family. The intention was for Amelia to live with us. Since she thought that she was taking advantage of us, she had insisted that she was allowed to do all our laundry, our grocery shopping, and make some of the meals at the same time as looking after our baby. Ranger and I had agreed to it on the condition that she also taught the baby how to do those things over time. Although I was capable of doing laundry, I was barely able to do the minimum in the kitchen and Ranger and I wanted to make sure that our baby was more prepared for life than I was. Amelia had liked that compromise, and had agreed to teach the baby how to cook as she grew older.

So although Val and I were having challenges and I didn't want Val and Albert to have a close relationship with Tia, we did have a close relationship with Joe and Amelia, and they would provide the family that Tia would be missing with my family.

Of course, Ranger was close to his family and I had been greatly enjoying spending time with them myself. Like Ranger, they were good people, loving people, and were good supports to us. However, although they would be proud aunts and uncles and grandparents, they lived approximately an hour away and we only saw them about once a month.

We tried to arrange for our visits to coincide with our visits with Julie. Like Ranger and I, Ranger's family was greatly enjoying spending more time with Julie, and we were thankful that we had started the practice of having Julie visit once a month. Traditionally, Ranger would have only seen Julie when he went down to Florida for Easter, when Julie came up to Trenton for Thanksgiving, and the few times in-between when he took her out for dinner when he was in Miami. Although we weren't able to make it to Miami this Easter, with Julie having just come the weekend before it wasn't as devastating to have missed her as it could have been.

It had been nice to see Julie looking as happy as she had been. We had seen her in the middle of March, and she'd still been a little upset from the stalking that had happened in February. Despite Ranger's calm reaction in February, she had been concerned that he had looked down on her for being a victim. However, when she came up in March Ranger had spent a lot of time with her. They had cooked meals to put in the freezer. We had all watched movies together. Ranger had taken her out to buy her new running shoes. In short, we had just hung out with her doing everything and doing nothing, and it was great to just chill together. Julie had gone back to Florida and told her mom that she'd had a nice time and had excitedly told her mother that Ranger still loved her.

Since then, Julie had started going to different schools to talk to them about internet safety. She had written a speech with the help of the Miami police, and she said that she was getting standing ovations when she gave it. She was amazed that people wanted to listen to what she had to say, and Ranger and I told her how proud of her we were. She was determined to turn something bad into something good. She definitely took after her father.

Ranger, when he was a young teenager, had been arrested for jacking a car. Like with Julie, it was something devastating to him and could have turned out badly. He spent some time in juvie and, when he was released, his parents sent him to his aunt and uncle and grandmother in Florida to give him a fresh start. With his family's support, Ranger was able to turn a devastating life event around and use it to fuel his recovery. Like Julie, Ranger had made something of himself. I don't know if I would have had the strength as a teenager to recover as successfully as they had. I was incredibly proud of both of them. Each person had achieved so much in their lives, and it was more astounding when you knew of their history. They truly were like phoenixes, rising from the ashes.

Ranger got a call from reception, and his face was not happy when he hung up. "I'm sorry, babe. I have to go down to reception for a few minutes to deal with something."

"Is everything okay?"

Ranger smiled. "Nothing to worry about."


	8. Chapter 8

I called Joe a few minutes after sending him the report. "Hey", I said. "How are you?"

"Good", said Joe. "Tomorrow is your ultrasound, isn't it?" I could hear the excitement in his voice.

"It absolutely is. Are you ready for your first view of Tia?"

"I can't wait", said Joe. "What time do you want me to pick you up?"

"Eight. Our appointment for the ultrasound is for eight-thirty, I do blood work afterwards, and our obstetrician's appointment is at ten."

"I'll come up to your apartment." Ranger's office was a closed office. Civilians were not allowed to walk around and the only people who were allowed past the first floor were staff. However, when Morelli became the TPD liaison, he had been granted the ability to walk around unescorted. He had been given a key card for the parking garage and the ability to visit any department that he wanted to. It was an honor that I knew he appreciated.

"Sounds good", I said. "I'm also calling you for a favor."

"What's that?"

"I have sent you a report on Arnold Lakatos. As much as I don't want to believe this, I suspect he is committing insurance fraud."

"Okay. This is out of the blue. Tell me the story behind this report?"

"Arnold Lakatos is my Uncle Arnie. He was my grandmother's brother, so my great-uncle, and as far as I know, he died three months ago. My grandmother thought that she had seen him a few days ago and asked me to look into the case this morning. However, since just talking to my grandmother and thinking about this caused my blood pressure to rise, Ranger and I asked Miguel to do the search for me. He worked on it all day and just got back to me a few minutes ago with proof that Uncle Arnie is alive. He tracked Uncle Arnie through the system and found some irregularities in what happened and some questions, and between it all we have discovered that my grandmother was probably right."

"You realize that she is going to become a holy terror now that she has actually discovered a crime? She was bad enough when she made them up and they weren't even real."

I groaned. "I know."

"What were the irregularities that Miguel found?"

"My great-uncle was a mortician. When he died in his sleep, the paramedics weren't called. Instead, the coroner was called and he called the funeral home. Additionally, my aunt and uncle took out a large insurance policy a year ago. Just a week ago they were paid out over two million dollars – right before the coroner and the funeral home were paid a hundred thousand each. My aunt and uncle, around the same time as they took out the insurance policy, bought a house in Arizona. They were intending to move there at the end of this month. My aunt has decided to continue with this plan even though my uncle has died. She said that she felt comforted when she was in Arizona because she had spent such good times with my uncle there. That in itself is unusual, since they hardly ever spent time there."

"What about kids?"

"Aunt Betty and Uncle Arnie had two children. Their son died when he was a teenager in a car accident, and their daughter died just six months ago from breast cancer. My aunt has generated a lot of sympathy for surviving both her daughter's death and her husband's death just three months apart. It would have been very challenging for Aunt Betty, if her husband had really died."

"Do you think that your aunt's daughter is also scamming the insurance company and all their friends?"

"Oh, God. Isn't that a cheery thought?" I paused. "I can't really see Dianne doing that, but I wouldn't have suspected that Uncle Arnie was capable of doing this either."

"Okay. I'll look into it. What are you planning on telling your grandmother?"

"As little as possible. For the meantime, I'm just going to tell her that I haven't had a chance to get to it. If I told her that there was an issue, I wouldn't put it past my grandmother to approach Aunt Betty and try to force a confession from her and, in doing so, let Aunt Betty know that there was an investigation being done."

"I'll work with Miguel on this, and I'll ask him to look into the coroner further to see if he could find out whether the coroner had ever done something like this in the past. Whatever you do, don't worry about it. I will look after this with Miguel, and follow it through the system."

"Thanks, Joe."

"I'll tell you tomorrow where I am in the investigation, and I'll keep you informed as it goes on so that you aren't blindsided by anything that I find out."

"I'd appreciate it."

"No problem. After all, I don't want your grandmother making up stories about me. Listening to her stories is always a little harrowing, and it is always a little difficult to reverse the damage."

"What is the current story that she is spreading around?" I said.

Morelli hesitated.

"Tell me", I said.

"She's telling everyone that you haven't been seen around the neighborhood because you were raped five times and are now expecting quintuplets, and you are in hiding because you are recovering from being gang-raped."

I groaned. "That's not even possible", I said.

"Many of the older crowd believes her. I know my grandmother believed her."

I groaned again. I had always envisioned the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel as looking like Grandma Bella, Joe's grandmother. She was stoop-shouldered and spare, had iron-gray hair perpetually pulled back in a tight bun, and had piercing black eyes and a sharp beak of a nose. But while her appearance was disturbing, it was her personality that really scared the crap out of me. She hated me and regularly cursed me. Unfortunately, her curses seemed to work. She was the kind of person that all adults and children and self-respecting dogs would cross the street to avoid. When I had been going out with Joe, I'd had to interact with her periodically, and I always came out the loser in the interaction. Both Joe and Ranger told me to ignore her and that she was just an old woman who had far too much time on her hands. However, I knew, despite their claims, that she was an evil old hag.

She was a woman who adored her grandsons. When I was going out with Joe, she was angry at me for being with him. She said I was ungodly and immoral and cursed me because I had the audacity to sleep with Joe without being married to him. Joe, of course, was a model citizen according to her, despite sleeping with me. However, when I broke up with Joe the final time, she was angry at me for breaking up with him. She called me a slut who led men on, and she cursed me for making Joe upset.

Years of being cursed by her meant that I tried my best to never be in the same vicinity as Grandma Bella. I had been largely able to avoid her since Joe and I had broken up a year ago, and that was the way I liked it. As much as I suspected that Grandma Bella liked cursing me, she also seemed happy to not have to spend time with me. But despite not being cursed by her recently, I knew that she would appreciate any story that brought strife to me, and the thought that I had been raped by five men would be something that she would enjoy.

"Oh boy", I said. "Who else has Grandma told that story to?"

"I'm sorry, cupcake."

A wave of panic washed over me. "Who else, Joe?"

He sighed. "Everybody. In the last two days, I've had people stop me in the convenience store, in the deli, and in Pino's, and that's not including all the people who have stopped me at work." Pino's was the local Italian eatery that Morelli and I had frequented often when we were seeing each other. It served the best pizza in Trenton, and their meatball subs were amazing. "In each case, people were questioning me and telling me that I was lucky to have escaped before you were raped so many times."

"They probably said that I deserved it as well, and called me a slut too, didn't they?"

Joe didn't say anything.

"Crap", I said. Tears came to my eyes.

"You can't let it bother you, cupcake. They'll find out the truth when you deliver Tia, and your single baby will support what I have told everyone."

"What have you been telling everyone?"

"That you are in a loving relationship that is the right relationship for you, and you and I have a great friendship. I tell them that I am going to be an uncle in another two months or so. I had to stop saying that though."

"Why's that?"

"Prudence Kiss heard that and started passing around the rumor that my brother Mario got you pregnant before he was incarcerated."

"But Mario was put in jail for trying to kill me!"

"That's why the gossip is so juicy. I've had a few people ask me whether it was true."

"Oh boy."

"Precisely."

"Okay, if you could look into Uncle Arnie's death, I'll try not to let the gossip bother me."

"I'm sorry that I was the bearer of bad news, but I thought that you'd like to know."

I sighed. "I'm glad I know. I'll see you tomorrow." I hung up the phone and sighed again. I heard Ranger enter the apartment and tried to swipe the tears away from my face before he saw that I'd been crying.

I didn't get the tears brushed away fast enough. "What's wrong, babe?" said Ranger as he walked into the den again with tall tumblers of iced lemon water.

"Joe just told me the most recent rumor that my grandmother has spread around."

Ranger waited until I sat up, and he angled his body down and snugged me into his body, my side to his chest, as I got comfortable. He handed me a water. "Do I want to know what she's said this time?"

"Probably not." I sighed and swiped some more tears away from my face.

"That doesn't sound promising", he said. "Hit me. What did she say?"

"She said that I was raped five times and is now consequently pregnant with quintuplets. Joe said that he's had people come from all over to tell him that I'm a slut and five babies was what I deserved."

"That's not even possible."

"I know that and you know that, but the older crowd didn't have the benefit of sex ed when they were in school, and they don't know that it's not possible. Joe's been telling them that I've been busy at work which is why people haven't been seeing much of me, and that I'm in a solid relationship with someone. He said he was telling people that he was going to be a proud uncle, but he had to stop saying that because the rumor started that Mario was the baby's father."

"Oh boy."

"My grandmother has started an avalanche again, and even if I tell her off she won't understand the difficulties that she has created."

"Do you want me to talk to her?"

"That's up to you. I certainly don't want to talk to her."

"I will", said Ranger. He looked at the time and saw that it was ten minutes to six. He smiled. It was the perfect time to call my grandmother. In ten minutes, dinner would be on their table and the call would consequently be short.

He pulled out his phone and dialed my parents' number. Minutes later, he put it on speakerphone. "Hi, Helen", he said. "Steph is here with me, and we were hoping to talk to Edna."

"Sure. Is everything okay?"

"No. Edna has been spreading rumors again, and Steph is quite upset by them."

"I haven't heard what she is saying. What is the rumor this time?"

"That Steph was raped five times and is now expecting quintuplets."

"Oh, for the love of God. Ma!" I could hear some scurrying, and then my mother said, "I'll just put this on speakerphone."

I could hear my grandmother say to my mother, "what has your knickers in a knot?"

"You've been telling everyone that Steph was raped five times and that she's expecting quintuplets!"

Grandma laughed. "That story was one of my better ones. People have been coming up to me all over the place to ask if it is true."

"It's not funny, Grandma", I said. "You hurt my feelings when you spread rumors like that. How am I supposed to show my face in town now, if everyone thinks that I'm a rape victim? I mean, there's no shame in being a rape victim, but the people you have spread the rumors with aren't concerned about me and what I supposedly went through. They are only concerned about getting the latest gossip. These are the same people who you told that I slept with the entire football team when I was in high school. Memories are long, and those same people are all calling me a slut and are blaming me for the supposed rapes. They are saying that I got what I deserved and that I probably asked for it, and all the other horrible and unfair things that people say when someone gets raped."

"That was another good story. I enhanced your reputation by telling everyone that you had sex with the entire football team."

"Grandma! By telling everyone that I had slept with the entire football team I had interest from people that I didn't even know."

"I was just expanding your horizons, dear."

"Yeah, well if Dickie hadn't heard that I had slept with the entire football team he probably wouldn't have pursued me so relentlessly, so I can blame my first disaster of a marriage on you."

"That was all you."

"Grandma, if you hadn't spread that rumor Dick the Prick wouldn't have been interested in me. And if you hadn't spread that rumor I wouldn't have been so pathetically grateful that he was showing an interest in me. After you spread that rumor, the kind of boys who were interested in me were the bad boys who had no respect for women. You effectively killed my love life in school. Now I am finally with someone who loves me and someone I love dearly. But instead of celebrating that love you've had to ruin that as well. Now, instead of being happy for me and where I am in my life, people are titillated by the thought that bad fortune has befallen me again. They are saying I deserved it for my loose ways of living and that karma is a bitch. They are saying that I didn't actually get raped but that I'm claiming it so that Ranger doesn't get upset with my pregnancy." I sobbed in a breath. "You've ruined my peace of mind and my happiness. Again." I pulled myself to standing and ran out of the room and into the bedroom. I threw myself on the bed and proceeded to bawl my eyes out.

A few minutes later Ranger walked into the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed my back and let me cry. When my tears slowed down to the sniffles and hiccups, I said, "I'm sorry."

"That's okay. Your grandmother needs to learn that these stories are about real people, and that she is making a mess that her loved ones have to deal with. She has to learn that her gossiping isn't funny, and that she's ruining lives with it."

"I'm sorry for running out on you and leaving you to deal with it."

"That's okay. I told her that, if I heard of her spreading another rumor, I would put out the rumor that she had lost all her marbles and that your mother was thinking of doing a lobotomy as a last ditched attempt to bring her back to reality. And in the meantime, I would tell people to not believe anything that was said."

I snorted. "What did she say to that?"

"She said that she would stop spreading rumors. But to tell you the truth, I don't know if it was me saying that or your mother telling your grandmother that she would be denied dessert for the next month. I hung up the phone shortly afterwards, but when I hung up your mother was still chewing out your grandmother. I hope this time it sinks in."

"Me too." I wrapped myself around Ranger's body and buried my face in his thigh. Ranger continued to rub my back slowly and firmly.

"So tell me about the football team", he said.

"I was sixteen when I first made love. It was to Joe Morelli, as you know, and we did it behind the display case at the Tasty Pastry after hours one night. Joe knew that he was my first. I wanted to date him – I had a big crush on him. But when the rumor got around that I'd had sex with every man on the football team, Joe believed it. I didn't see him again, but I sent him a letter when he was in the navy and he sent me one in return. It said that he wasn't interested in being with someone who was so indiscriminant in bestowing their favors. In retrospect, that was a bit of a crock considering he would nail anyone and everyone that he saw. However, at the time it just made me upset. So the next time I saw him, when I was eighteen, I ran him over in my father's car. He got a broken leg out of it, and I felt vindicated for his failure to recognize that I wasn't that person in the rumor. After all, I had given him my virginity. He should have known that I wasn't the kind of girl to just put out for anyone."

"So what happened with Dickie?"

"I didn't want to be the person who gave out to anyone, so I didn't have sex again until I was married. But Dickie had heard the rumors and had believed that I was experienced in making love. He was frustrated that I wouldn't have sex with him before we were married, but he went with it because he thought that I would rock his boat when we eventually made love. So we waited until after we were married and Dickie, who thought that I was akin to a hooker in experience, was sorely disappointed when he found out that I'd had sex only once before. But on my side, I was pathetically grateful that someone was interested in me despite the rumors. I thought that he was a lawyer and was someone who was going places, and I thought that it was the beginning of good things for me. After all, you have to remember that my name was scratched into many, many toilet stalls around town as the person to call for a good time. People ran with the story of me sleeping with the entire football team, and everyone on the team claimed to have been with me because they didn't want to appear to be the only footballer who hadn't slept with me. It was a mess. Dickie was the only person that I had met that appeared to be a good guy. The other boys were interested in me for what I could do sexually for them and were quite blatant about their desires and what they wanted me to do."

"Rumors can have a way of ruining lives."

"Yes, and my grandmother doesn't understand that. She'll be remorseful for a couple of days, and then she'll be back at it again. She won't reverse any of the rumors and I'd just be happy if she didn't spread more." My breath caught on a sob. "I love my grandmother, but sometimes I just want to shake her."

"I think you shook her up tonight."

"It's too bad that I know it won't matter. My grandmother has a gyroscope in her. She won't stay off course for long."


	9. Chapter 9

After the storm of tears passed, Ranger got into bed with me and soothed me to sleep. I don't know how long he stayed, but after an hour he woke me up. I went to the bathroom and washed my face and hands, and joined Ranger in the dining room for dinner. Ranger was just dividing the salad into bowls. A glass of cold milk was already poured and at our seats, and Ranger had already put our favorite dressings on the table for our salad.

I carried the salad bowls through to the table as Ranger carried the plates of food. Ella had made a roast beef dip and homemade sweet potato fries to go with our salad. It looked delicious.

"What did you do with your time when I was sleeping?" I said.

"I phoned your grandmother back and told her that you had just cried yourself to sleep, and that I didn't want to see her again for quite some time. She said that pregnant women were overly sensitive, and I told her that I must have switched genders and become pregnant as well, as I was very upset. I said that you were hurt and embarrassed by the rumors. I, however, was angry and she didn't want to see me angry. She laughed. I didn't. I told her to ask you what I had done to Dickie and to that pedophile. Then I hung up on her."

I smiled sadly. "I'm sorry to get you involved in my crazy family."

"That's okay. A few minutes after I hung up with your grandmother I got a call from Rachel." Rachel was Ranger's ex, but over the last few months she had been becoming a good friend of mine. We talked on the phone two or three times each week, and had ever since the wedding. She was a good person. Ranger and Rachel hadn't known each other well when they discovered their pregnancy, and they had gotten married to provide benefits to Julie as she was growing up. They had tried to make it as a couple, but they were too different. However, their respect for the other person and their friendship had remained, and Ranger said that they were now better friends than they had been while they were together. Of course, they hadn't been together long. Just the length of his first leave.

I smiled. "How's she doing? She was supposed to have started seeing a psychiatrist today. I know she was worried about her appointment." Rachel had been battling clinical depression over the last six months and, although she had been prescribed medication and she'd been working with her family doctor, the depression wasn't lifting. Her family doctor had referred her to a psychiatrist for treatment. I was really glad she was getting the help. I could hear how much she was struggling.

It was interesting how things went sometimes. Rachel had needed to see a psychiatrist, and she was balking because of the stigma associated with mental illness. However, she had a lot of respect for Ranger and viewed him as the epitome of mental and physical strength. So when she found out that Ranger was seeing a psychiatrist, and that I was seeing a psychologist, she decided that getting help wasn't a sign of weakness after all. She was referred to the doctor four weeks before, and today was supposed to be her first appointment.

"She said her appointment was good, but she was actually calling because something told her that something was wrong and that she should call, and she was just checking in to make sure that everything was okay."

"Wow! That's incredible that she would pick today, of all days, to call with the thought that something was wrong."

"I know. She's always had a sixth sense about things. It isn't the first time that she has called me on a day where I have run into problems, and sometimes just hearing her concern is enough to help me through things."

"Did you tell her what was going on?"

"I did. She said that, if you wanted to talk, she was always available to listen. She also said that she wanted to run something by us, and she mentioned it so that we had time to think about it."

"What's that?"

"She said that, with the money we gave the two of them for their tenth anniversary, they are able to afford going to Europe for six weeks rather than the four that they were planning. They have tentatively booked flights leaving July third and coming back on the thirteenth of August. She sounded quite excited about the trip. It's the most I've heard her sound excited for some time, so it was nice to hear. The flights they found were from Newark to England, and returning from Italy to Newark. They thought that they'd fly up with Julie and, if it was okay with us, they thought they would come a few days before their departure date so that they could spend some time with us and to help out with Tia. I told her that the offer was generous and that we'd talk about it and get back to her. She said that she won't take offense if we just want Julie there as well without her, and knowing her I don't think she would be offended. She's just excited about the baby. I think she's just as excited as Julie is."

"That's really nice of her. We are going to have a number of people willing to help us when the baby first arrives. Amelia wants to be here. I know my mother and grandmother will want to be here. I'm sure your mother would like to come. Ella will want to help. We're going to have to figure out how to schedule everyone so that everyone gets a chance to play with the baby."

"That's true. Any suggestions?"

"It's hard, because everyone is so excited about the baby. Everybody wants to have the chance to spend time with her when she is born. I understand that."

"Add in that she'll probably be induced early and we can't predict the delivery date."

"How about we have Amelia come only during days this summer, until Julie goes back to Florida? If we are too tired, Amelia will be able to keep Julie busy while we sleep or work with the baby. We'll be left with the nights on our own, but then I had always thought that we'd be on the night shift anyway. My mom and grandmother won't be able to come most days since they are looking after Val's kids four days a week. However, I was wondering whether your mom would mind coming to stay for the first couple of days when I get home from the hospital. Then, if my mom is available, she could come on the days that she doesn't have Val's kids. I know that my mom wouldn't be with the baby as much as she would like, but we have that family barbecue to go to on the fourth, so she'll get her fill of being with Tia then."

"Okay, so Mama for the first two days after we get home from the hospital, your mom as she is available, and Amelia for the days after the mothers have left. What about Rachel? She also wanted to know what would be a good day for Julie to come."

"Tia is due the fourth, but we know that she is probably going to be born early. We are trying to keep her in there until a minimum of the thirty-seventh week, which makes her delivery date June thirteenth. Until today, I had confidence that I'd be able to keep her in there closer to her fortieth week. After today, though, I'm not as confident."

"Because your blood pressure spiked this morning?"

"I'm sure it spiked again this evening when I was talking to my grandmother."

"You'll just have to avoid her again."

"I know. That is so much easier said than done."

"I hear you."

"I'm not looking forward to hearing the reading tomorrow."

"I know. When you are finished your appointment, would you give me a call to let me know how it went?"

"I will."

"So what should we do about Julie and Rachel?"

"I had wanted Julie here for a week before Tia is born, but it doesn't look like that will happen. I don't know. I like Rachel a lot and think of her as a member of our family, but I don't want her to feel awkward if she shows up and the baby hasn't been born, or if your mother is here helping us with the baby."

"Okay, assuming that the baby will be born at least a week early, Tia will then be born sometime between June thirteenth and June twenty-seventh. I know we wanted Julie to come for a week or so beforehand, but I don't think that will be happening. How about all three of them come on the twenty-seventh? They could be here for a few days before they leave on the third of July."

"That works for me." I popped the last mouthful of sweet potato into my mouth and sighed with pleasure, but then tears came to my eyes again.

Ranger cupped my cheek in his hand. "Babe, don't let your grandmother get to you." He always did have a way of knowing what I was thinking without me having to say it.

"I was just thinking that my grandmother would want to be with Tia when she is born as well."

"I know. How do you feel about that?"

"I don't know. I love my grandmother and usually I can slough off the comments, but her stories seem to be getting worse over time. I don't know how to deal with them."

"But she's always been bad, if she told everyone that you had sex with everyone on the football team."

"True, but her stories are getting wilder over years, and they are getting more frequent. After all, in the last year alone she has told everyone that Edmund was the result of Val's relationship with an alien, that my niece Lisa is actually a twin to Victoria, it's just that they were born a year apart, you are the estranged son of an Arab prince, and now that I've been raped by five men."

"She's been telling people that I'm the son of an Arab prince?"

I groaned. "That was last fall, when I was going out with you but we weren't living together then. She told everyone that you were the son of an Arab prince but although you were tanned you weren't a terrorist. I was surprised that she specified that. I thought that it was much more likely that she would have said that you were a terrorist and called the army on you just for the shock factor. Luckily, she realized that doing so would be crossing the line."

"Why did she make me a prince?"

"I guess she saw that we were heading into a serious relationship and she thought it would be nice to be related to royalty."

"She was trying to give you a good reputation and make you famous?"

"Knowing my grandmother, it was to increase her reputation and make her famous."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Think of what I could do with that rumor. I could get women falling all over me. Being a prince has some advantages, I think."

I tightened my eyes as I looked at him. "Do you want women falling all over you?"

Ranger smiled. "Just you, babe. Just you."

"Good answer."


	10. Chapter 10

Ranger and I made up the crib and organized Tia's clothes in her dresser. We hung the pictures that Celia drew for us above the change table and we hung the three-dimensional flowers above the crib. We even laid out the area rug that we had purchased and put the stuffed bunny in her crib, the one that Julie had made for Tia in her sewing class at school. We took a picture of it and sent it to Julie with the caption, "we're ready!" By the end of the night, Ranger and I were very happy with the way the nursery had turned out.

Just before bed, Ranger and I did some of the stretches that Miles had taught me. It was nice doing them with Ranger. We had traditionally exercised together. That wasn't entirely true. Ranger traditionally exercised on his own. However, I had traditionally needed to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to do any form of exercise. Over time, I had started to enjoy learning self-defense. Ranger was a good teacher, and there was something arousing about getting all hot and sweaty with him and, if I didn't get turned on by that, I definitely would be by the massage that Ranger often gave me afterwards. Aerobic exercise like running, however, wasn't nearly as interesting to me. Likewise, I didn't enjoy stretching. My theory was that, if God wanted you to touch your toes, he would have put them on your knees. I didn't see what all the hype was about. I don't think that I've ever felt an endorphin rush, and when I was finished exercising I felt exhausted rather than energized.

However, I had missed getting into the gym with Ranger to work my body, and with lying down so much of my day, I missed moving my body and using it to its fullest. I had even missed stretching. I didn't miss running, but I did miss stretching. I thought it was especially important. I'd been having cramps in my back earlier, and I thought that the stretching would go a long way to making me feel more comfortable.

So I was glad to show Ranger the moves that I had been working on. Miles gave me a new exercise to do each time I saw him, and he wrote them down so that I had an exercise routine to do when he wasn't training me. I didn't tell him this, but I did the routine about three times each day. I really appreciated working my body, and I found it to be an effective way of combating the muscle discomfort associated with lying down constantly. I also thought that, since Miles was picking exercises that would be good to prepare my body for the birth, that I would be better prepared the more I did the exercises.

However, to make things interesting that evening, I did the exercises without any clothes on, and let me tell you that I had never had as much interest in working with me to do the exercises as I did then. After finishing the routine, Ranger looked at me. "You don't do your exercises like this with Miles, do you?"

I smiled. "No", I said. "This is something I save just for you."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Thank God. He's a good trainer, and I would hate to have to kick his ass and fire him."

"You would really fire him?"

"No one other than me or a doctor gets to see you naked."

"So when Morelli sees my tummy tomorrow for the ultrasound?"

"That's just a tummy. He's not seeing you in your wherewithal."

"Besides, it's nothing that he hasn't seen before."

"I try not to think about that."

I huffed out a laugh. "I actually understand that. I try not to think about Rachel having seen you before either. It is rare that I think of it, but sometimes it slaps me across the face and I have to retract my claws."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Rachel and I were only together for a year, and most of that time I was overseas. Actual time spent together was only two months or so. Comparatively, you were with Morelli for four years."

"I know that's true with my head, but I have to say that I'm glad that Rachel is such a sweet person or it would be much more difficult to handle."

Ranger smiled. "I understand that. While Morelli's personality means that he will never become my best friend, I do admire him as a person. He's a good cop and a good man who tries hard to do the right thing and, even more importantly, he cares deeply about you and wouldn't do anything willingly to hurt you. I have so much respect for how he has handled our relationship. I know it couldn't have been easy for him and, honestly, I don't know if I could have done it. I'm happy to say that he's a good friend of mine. That doesn't mean that I want him seeing you naked. It just means that he's a good friend of mine. Tank is a good friend of mine as well, and I don't want him seeing you naked either."

"I'm relieved that the two of you get along. While I don't want to go out with Morelli, he is still – after you – my closest friend and it's important to me that there isn't any weirdness between the two of you."

"I feel like my friend base has been expanding now that we're together."

"So has mine. Now that we're together, I've added Rachel and Amelia to my list of close friends, and I have deepened my friendship with Tank and Hal. They are all good people."

"Yes, they are."

I finished my last exercise and wobbled as I tried to get to my feet. Ranger smiled and reached down to pull me up and into his arms. He gave me a deep kiss as his hands roamed and slid across my back and sides. I started to breathe heavily and I let my hands explore just as much as Ranger's. "That was a good workout", said Ranger, "but I have a different workout in mind, and I can guarantee that my workout is more fun."

"Really?" I said. "You're not going to make me go on the treadmill, are you?"

Ranger smiled. "No, but I will increase your heart rate."

"My heart rate has already increased."

"Then my workout is doing its job."

"I guess this means that the workout is over, and we can go into the warm down portion of the routine."

Ranger smiled. "Oh, no. This workout is just getting started." He kissed me deeply again, then lifted me and carried me to the bed. He carefully put me down on the mattress and shucked his clothing and, when he joined me on the bed, I decided that although I liked Miles's workout routine, I much preferred Ranger's.

Ranger and I did a workout several times throughout the night, and Ranger had been able to get out of bed, down to the gym and back again before I woke up. He kissed me awake before he got ready for the day. "You have a few minutes to wake up", he said, "while I shower and shave. I can't let you sleep, however. You have your ultrasound this morning, and Morelli would be upset if you slept through your appointed time."

I smiled sleepily. I had been having an excellent dream about Tia and Julie. Tia had been about a year old and Julie had come to visit, and Tia had yelled with happiness and babbled as she ran to her sister. Julie had dropped her bags and swung Tia up in the air and hugged her. It had been a touching scene. I couldn't remember anything else from that dream, but I appreciated the bit that I had remembered.

Ranger smiled and kissed me on my nose, and turned to enter the bathroom so that he could shower. I stretched and patted my tummy. Tia had been active the day before, but was sleepy that morning and not moving around much. I smiled. Perhaps we would be lucky and she'd be one of those babies that liked to sleep in each morning. While Ranger wouldn't care about that, it would be much nicer for me.

I hauled myself to my feet and walked into the powder room to use the facilities. I was close to Ranger, but I found there was something inherently gross about peeing in front of him – and don't get me started on pooping. Ranger didn't mind either way but to me, peeing and pooping were solo activities and I didn't want an audience with I did so. In fact, I hated it so much that Ranger arranged for the new apartment to have a separate enclosure for the toilet, just so that we could both use the ensuite at the same time. I could not stress how grateful I was to him for this consideration.

When I finished in the washroom, I walked back into the master ensuite and undressed just as Ranger was getting out of the shower. He dried off as he watched me, and his eyes dilated to black in arousal. "God, you're hot", he said.

I smiled self-consciously. "I'm not hot", I said. "I'm fat."

Ranger shook his head. "No, babe. You're pregnant, and there's a difference. But even if you were bigger, you'd still be hot."

"How can you say that?"

"Being hot isn't necessarily how you look, although that would be part of it. It's how you move, how you smile. It's your outlook and your enjoyment of life. It is a whole host of things that don't have anything to do with weight, and you have all those things in spades. So, yes. Even if you weighed three hundred pounds, you'd still be hot."

"The rate I'm going, I will weigh three hundred pounds by the time the baby is born."

"Babe, you know that most of your weight is water retention. It's part of the preeclampsia. You're not eating unhealthful amounts, nor are you eating unhealthy foods. Our baby is growing well in there. Don't focus on your weight gain. Focus instead on how you have been able to keep your blood pressure down. Focus instead on how you've been able to stop your organs from shutting down. Focus instead on how you've been able to limit the amount of protein in your urine. Focus instead on the positive results of your non-stress test. And most of all, focus on your high kick counts and how happy Tia is in there. You'll lose the weight. Your health is the most important thing though, and it is as good as it can be. The doctor is happy with how you are doing."

I looked down at the ground and bit my lip as I struggled not to cry. "He won't be happy today."

Ranger wrapped the towel around his waist and gathered me into his arms. He kissed me on the top of my head. "Your blood pressure may not have increased over the last two days", he said. "It may have just been a blip."

I shuddered in a breath. "Thanks", I said. "I've been so scared that the baby has been affected. My focus has been on keeping the baby in there until thirty-seven weeks that, if I can't, I will feel like a failure."

"Babe, you are doing everything that you can do to help our baby. You have to hang on to that."

I kissed his pecs and stepped back. Ranger dropped his hand on my tummy and smiled as Tia kicked him. "That's what you have to think about", he said. "That's what's important. Did you do your kick count today?"

"Not yet. Because I don't wake up at a regular time, I do the kick count at four o'clock each day, just before I have my afternoon nap."

"Okay. How was it yesterday?"

"She was more active yesterday than she has been in the last week. Yesterday, it only took ten minutes to get to ten kicks, whereas she was averaging fifteen minutes before."

Ranger smiled and kissed me. "That's what you have to focus on, babe. The rest? Yes, it's important. But it is just noise. You are doing everything you can, and your efforts are showing. Tia is doing well. She's healthy and strong. You're healthy and strong. That's what's important." He turned me around. "Now go shower. Morelli will be chomping at the bit, and I know that you won't want to keep him waiting."

I smiled. That was true. My guess was that Joe hadn't slept well last night. He was probably too excited. He had been thrilled to be asked if he would like to go to an ultrasound appointment with me. He said that, although he wasn't the father, he was as excited about Tia as if he was, and he had been looking at various stages of fetal development online and following Tia's development as best as he could. So had Ranger, and between the two of them they were well versed in what stage of development Tia was in.

I had a quick shower and dried off, blasted my hair and slicked on some mascara and gloss. I changed into a jean skirt and a gray and white striped tank top with the words 'don't eat watermelon seeds' displayed across the belly, and added a black blazer. The shirt was one that Morelli had bought for me for Christmas, and it never failed to make me laugh. By the time I was finished dressing, Morelli was waiting for me in the kitchen and talking quietly to Ranger. "I'm sorry that I'm half an hour early", he said with a smile as he turned to me. "I was just so excited about the ultrasound today, and I thought that if we were early they might give us some extra time to watch the baby."

Ranger and I smiled. It was nice to share the ultrasound with someone who was so enthusiastic about seeing it. Of course, Amelia had been excited when she accompanied me too. However, as excited as Amelia was, I thought Morelli was more so.

Ranger put a couple of peeled hard-boiled eggs in front of me, and put a breadboard with a loaf of orange-date bread on the table between where we were going to be eating. He topped up my coffee cup, and topped up Morelli's and his own, before carrying three plates over to the dining table and setting the table.

"Does anyone else want eggs?" I said.

Ranger smiled. "Eat them, babe. You need the protein."

I looked at Morelli. "Eat them", he said. "I already ate breakfast."

"Surely you'll have some cake", I said. "Ranger baked it on the weekend, and I think it is my favorite loaf that he's made me."

Ranger thought about smiling. "You say that every time."

I grinned. "And I'm right. Whatever loaf or muffin you make me is my favorite at the time."

"If I had to make any loaf in the world, what kind would you want me to make?"

I thought about that for a moment. "All of them", I finally said.

Ranger laughed.

"Steph is eating much better now than she did when she was single – or even when she lived with me", said Morelli. "She used to eat chocolate-powdered cereal, and most of the time she didn't have milk in the house so she ate it plain."

"There's a place in life for worthless, tastes-good cereal", I said, "and that place is in making one feel satisfied. It may not be a healthy choice of food to eat, but it is a choice that makes one happy."

"That's because you are experiencing a sugar rush", said Ranger. "There are much healthier ways of improving your mood other than through a sugar rush."

"But the sugar rush is so rewarding. There is nothing like a good sugar rush."

Ranger laughed. "You have just enough time to drink a banana smoothie if you want me to make you one. That's a healthy sugar rush, and with the banana and the fiber in it, you are less likely to crash than you would if you ate chocolate cereal."

"Don't knock that cereal", I said. "It is fortified with vitamins and minerals."

"So does that mean you want a banana smoothie or not?" said Ranger as he finished his bread and swallowed back the last of his coffee.

"Yes, please", I said. "I'll take it to go." I smiled. "I think Joe will have a stroke if I take much more time to eat my breakfast."

Morelli huffed out a laugh. "What? It's not every day you see your adopted niece on the ultrasound screen."

I finished my eggs and bread. "I just have to use the facilities", I said, "and I'll be ready to go in about five minutes." I gathered the dirty plates and carried them into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher, and Ranger carried through the leftover breakfast. He placed the bread in a glass container and put it in the fridge to keep it fresh as I went back into the master ensuite to brush my teeth and use the facilities. By the time I got out a couple of minutes later, Ranger was standing at the front door with Morelli and a travel mug of banana smoothie. Joe already had his shoes on and his keys in his hand.

I layered a trench coat on and slid my feet into some canvas shoes. My feet had swollen so much that Amelia and I'd had to go to Walmart to buy a pair of canvas shoes in a larger size the week before and, judging by how tight the shoes were on me again, I thought that I would be glad when the weather got a little warmer and I'd be able to wear flip-flops. If nothing else, they'd be easier to put on my feet as I wouldn't have to bend over to fit them on.

I grabbed my purse, gave Ranger a brief kiss, thanked him for the smoothie as I took it from his hands, and followed Morelli out the door. We waited for the elevator and soon were on our way down to the parking level. Minutes later, we were in the car and driving to the hospital. "So your blood pressure was very elevated yesterday?" said Morelli.

"I told you that."

"You didn't tell me that it was almost as high as it was when you were in the hospital."

"But it was coming down again."

"Just this thing with your uncle has you upset?"

"And we needed to fire someone yesterday. I walked into my department and she called me a bitch. Then, she called me a bitch in front of Ranger a little later. I thought he was going to blow a gasket."

"I would have loved to see his face."

"Saying he was not happy is an understatement. Even though we dealt with it and even though the matter was finished, it was still upsetting."

"So she got fired for calling you a bitch?"

"There was also a matter of sexual harassment that Miguel was dealing with. She'd only worked there a week, and already the staff hated her. As Ranger and I walked out of Miguel's office after firing her, the rest of the staff clapped."

"That's bad." Morelli laughed.

I smiled. "Yeah, it was a bad scene. I had been feeling good about myself and what I could contribute to people after having my therapy appointment and then a meeting with Miguel and Dirk, and then it was ruined by our interactions with Ava."

"You can't let her ruin your peace."

"I know." I sighed as I drank my smoothie. "Have you had a chance to look into Uncle Arnie's case?" I said.


	11. Chapter 11

"Not yet", said Morelli.

I tightened my eyes as I looked at him. Morelli was a very good poker player, but I had learned his tells over the four years we had been going out. And he was rubbing his forefinger and thumb together on his right hand, which to me meant that he was hiding something. "What is it?" I said. "You can tell me what is going on. After all, I already know that he is alive when he is supposed to be dead."

"I don't want your blood pressure to rise", said Morelli.

"Joe, my blood pressure is going to rise much faster if I don't know what is going on than it will if I do. You know that about me. You used to tell me that I was a curious as a cat."

"I also used to tell you that your curiosity would get you in trouble someday."

"Today is not that day", I said. "What's going on?"

Morelli sighed. "Like Miguel found out, ATM surveillance cameras have caught images of your uncle. We have found proof that he has bought another car in his real name that he has left in Arizona, and besides the death certificate and the funeral he appears to have been living a full life, the same sort of life as he did before he 'died'.

"He has generally been living in Arizona while your Aunt Betty has been living here, although there are daily phone calls from your aunt's and uncle's house in Arizona to your aunt's and uncle's house here in Trenton. However, he flew back to Trenton last week and has been hiding out in their house and helping Betty pack. You know all that already. It was in Miguel's report. However, what you don't know is that I'm taking a request to the judge this afternoon to get his body exhumed to see if we can prove, once and for all, that your uncle isn't dead. I think there is sufficient evidence that getting a court order to exhume the body will be quite easy."

"My aunt, if she is in on the fraud, will freak."

"I'm sorry, cupcake, but she is definitely in on the fraud. She has been receiving phone calls from someone living in her house in Arizona every night. She stopped receiving phone calls from that location when your uncle flew here from Arizona. While she has registered your uncle's death with the insurance company and has copies of the death certificate, she hasn't registered his death with the government. Neither have the funeral home or the coroner. This means that he is still able to do things like use his driver's license or his passport. According to the government, he is still alive."

"So the issue is not that the death hasn't been recorded – after all, according to the government he is still alive – but rather that he has stolen two million dollars from the insurance company."

"Yes. This makes it a case of fraud. If we can exhume the body, I suspect that we'll find that the coffin is empty."

"There had to be a lot of people in on this ruse."

"Not as many as you might suspect. There is the coroner and the funeral home parlor and your aunt and, of course, your uncle. Otherwise, there aren't any other people in on the ruse. Part of the reason it has been so successful is because there aren't very many people involved. It has been easy to keep quiet. After all, there aren't any kids that are involved, and the rest of the family isn't close to your aunt and uncle."

"That's true. Any relations are on my side of the family. Dianne didn't have a spouse or kids, and Aunt Betty's family had all died previously. As for my side, there is my grandmother and she and my aunt and uncle didn't really get along. My grandmother was a little jealous of her brother and she had never really liked my Aunt Betty."

"How come?"

"She says it's because she had wanted to name my mother Dianne and Aunt Betty named her daughter Dianne a couple of months before my mother was born. However, from what I could see, it was more because my great-grandparents preferred Aunt Betty over my grandmother, and she was angry because of that. That explanation makes more sense to me anyway. My grandmother is one to hold a grudge, but she is vibrant and loving, and her parents' failure to appreciate her would cut deep."

Morelli parked the car, and he locked it as we shut the doors. He walked with me to the hospital.

"So what are the next steps?" I said.

"It's a bit of an open-and-shut case", said Morelli. "We exhume the body and, assuming we don't find a corpse, we stake out your aunt's place until we find your uncle walking in or out of the house. Since he might be wearing a disguise, he might be hard to spot."

"Don't look at his face. Look at his gait. That will be the easiest way to spot him. He walks with a bit of a hop to each step. It is slight, but it is a telltale sign that it is my uncle."

"Okay. I'll tell the surveillance team to look at his gait, and I will review the video we have of him at the ATM to try to give the surveillance team something to go on."

"Thanks. If you don't find anything suitable, my mother may have a video with him walking that she might be able to share with us. It would, however, mean that my grandmother would find out about the investigation."

He shook his head. "Not my first choice", he said.

I led him into the imaging lab and registered, and we sit down to wait our turn. "I can understand that", I said. "It's not my first choice either."

I wiggled around and stretched my back. I thought I might have overdid it on the stretches the night before. I had been waves of pain in my lower back ever since I had woken up that morning. I smiled to myself. If I had been further along, I would have thought that I was in labor.

We didn't have to wait long before we were taken back. I got up on the examining table and lay down, and pulled up my shirt and down the waistband of my skirt. Morelli looked at my belly. It was much larger than it had been the week before, and my belly button was stretched flat. I realized as he had a look of awe on his face that he had never seen my belly when we went for my checkups before. My doctor had always positioned himself so that Joe couldn't see anything.

"You're not the dad, are you?" said the technician. She looked awfully confused.

I laughed. "This is the baby's uncle", I said. "We promised him that he could see his niece on an ultrasound, and he has been looking forward to seeing Tia."

The technical smiled. "Then let's have a little look." She turned to me. "How are you feeling?"

"Good, except for some periodic cramping. I think I overdid it when I was exercising yesterday."

The ultrasound technician frowned. "You see your obstetrician today, don't you?"

"Yes. I see him in an hour."

"Mention it to him. It is probably just the beginnings of Braxton-Hicks contractions, but he may want to look at your cervix to make sure that you aren't going into labor."

"Okay." I swallowed hard. "That would be bad, wouldn't it? I mean, I am not even thirty-one weeks along."

"Your baby would most likely be fine if she were delivered now, but your doctor may want to give you a shot to encourage your baby's lungs to develop faster. It would give your baby a much better chance of survival. The good news is that, if you are going into labor early, there might be things you can do to stop the labor. Those are things that you'd have to talk to your doctor about."

She squirted some gel onto my tummy and spread it around with the transducer and turned the screen so that Morelli and I could see the image. She took measurements and pictures. "The baby has somersaulted around and has dropped into your pelvis."

"Is that a bad thing?" said Morelli.

"No. With first time moms, it typically happens on average between two and four weeks before birth, but it can happen a long time before birth and it can happen once labor starts. It really isn't indicative of anything other than that your baby is starting to get ready to be delivered." She let us look at the baby for a few minutes. Morelli was entranced in the picture, and he grinned when Tia put her thumb in her mouth and started to suck. "Have you been keeping a kick count?" said the technician.

"I have. She's was kicking up a storm yesterday, but she has been sleepy today."

"Okay", she said. She froze an image of Tia on the screen, and left to get the doctor.

Morelli picked up his phone and texted someone, and then he looked up and smiled at me. "Thank you for sharing this with me", he said. His eyes looked suspiciously bright.

I smiled at him, but I was also worried. I wanted to make it past thirty-seven weeks. I had done a lot of research and had recognized how much better it was for the baby to go full-term, and I felt like a failure for the fact that the baby might not. As much as I was glad that Morelli was there, I wished that it had been Ranger with me.

The doctor came in and smiled. "Hey, how are you doing?"

I smiled at her in return. "Okay, thanks. How are you?"

"Can't complain. Who'd listen anyway?"

I laughed and, as a wave of discomfort washed over me again, I regulated my breathing just like they had taught me in the one prenatal class that Ranger and I had taken. Tears came to my eyes. We had just started them the week before and had another one scheduled for that evening. I had thought that they would be important to prepare me for the birth, and I wasn't ready to have the baby until the classes were done.

The pain receded as the doctor said, "let's have a little look at your daughter." She moved the transducer around my abdomen and looked at the measurements and pictures that were taken. "When do you see your obstetrician next?" she said.

"In about forty-five minutes", I said. "Is there a problem?"

The doctor smiled. "Not at all. The baby looks healthy and as though she is developing normally. The placenta looks like it is in good condition. Your baby has dropped, but although unusual to happen this early it isn't unheard of and is consequently nothing to be concerned about. She has flipped so that her head is in the pelvic position, but that may change as she moves around in there. Everything, as far as I can tell, looks good."

I breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Morelli. He looked relieved as well, but I could see the tiniest of tension around his eyes that meant that he wasn't completely reassured.

The doctor handed Morelli a tissue to wipe off my belly. "You're not the father", she said.

Morelli smiled. "No, I'm not. I'm a good friend and an adopted uncle."

The doctor smiled, but she also looked at him interestedly. "It's good that Stephanie has such a strong support system."

I looked at the two of them. "I'm very lucky", I said. "How big is the baby now?"

"She's about three pounds, and she seems to be growing fast. She is still a little small, but her development is good and there are no causes for concern."

I breathed a sigh of relief as Morelli finished wiping off my belly. As he did the final swipe, Tia kicked out and Morelli jumped. "Was that Tia?" he said as he laughed.

I smiled in relief. I had hardly felt her that morning. "Yes", I said.

Morelli smiled. "I had wondered what that would feel like, but I hadn't wanted to ask you if I could put my hands on your tummy."

"It's very special, isn't it?" said the doctor.

Morelli grinned. "This is a good day."

The doctor smiled. "I'll get these results to your obstetrician within the next half hour."

I thanked the doctor as Morelli helped me off the examining table and walked with me out of the imaging lab to the blood lab. He stayed in the waiting room while I gave my sample, and when we left we drove to the doctor's office. It wasn't far – the doctor's office was located in a building near to the police station, and was less than a five-minute drive from the hospital.

We got to my appointment ten minutes early but when we got there, Ranger got up from one of the chairs in the waiting room. He gave me a kiss as I grinned with relief at him. I hadn't wanted to say it, but despite seeing Tia on the screen and knowing that the doctor said that she was alright, I was worried about her.

I checked in as Ranger and Morelli waited anxiously for me, and came and sat between them when I had registered. "What are you doing here?" I said.

"Joe sent me a text saying that you were experiencing cramping, and he thought I would want to be in your checkup with you."

Tears came to my eyes. "Thanks, Joe", I said. "It's probably nothing, but I'm a bit worried anyway."

"I know, cupcake", said Morelli. "If it's okay with you, I'll wait to hear what the doctor had to say."

I smiled at him, but inside I was upset. Ranger picked up my hand, and I held onto him tightly.

The doctor must have been flying that morning, because we only had to wait a minute more before I was taken back, given a pee sample bottle and told to use the washroom, weighed, and taken into an examining room.

When we entered the examining room, Ranger sat on the guest chair and he tugged me down to his lap. "Why didn't you tell me about the cramping?" he said.

"I thought that it was my fault. I had been doing my exercises two or three times a day, and I thought that maybe I had done them too strenuously last night. I thought that, if I rested today, I might be able to ease them myself."

"Babe." Saying 'babe' as a single sentence meant many things to Ranger. It could have meant that he was feeling amorous or it could have meant that he was feeling exasperated. It could be a hello or it could be a warning. In this case, it was an expression of solidarity and support.

I rested my head on Ranger's shoulder, and just breathed.

"It will be okay", he said.

"She's too little to be born", I said. "She's not thirty-seven weeks yet."

"I know, babe, but she will come when she is ready, and it might not be when we think she's ready. She is already developing a mind of her own."

"She'll be as stubborn as her father?"

"Heaven help us", he said with a laugh.

I smiled and closed my eyes before sitting up suddenly as the doctor walked in and smiled at us. "How have your last couple of days been?" he said.

"Okay", I said, "but yesterday my grandmother called and requested that I look into my Uncle Arnie's death, and my blood pressure rose after talking to her. I couldn't get it down completely through therapy."

"Why does she want you to look into your uncle's death?"

"He died three months ago, and my grandmother swore that she saw him the other day. So I asked one of my staff to look into it, and it appears that she is right. My uncle is very much alive and is committing insurance fraud. The TPD is going to the courts today to try to get a court order to exhume the body."

He shook his head. "I should have known that you'd have a good story to go with that. What did it rise to?" He got out the electronic sphygmomanometer and indicated to me to sit on the examining bed.

"149/87, but after my therapy appointment I'd been able to get it down to 146/85. I don't know what it is today."

"Let's find out", he said. He applied the cuff and turned the machine on, and minutes later he said, "it's down to 144/85, but it is above what it was a couple of days ago. I know that I'm not seeing you on Friday with it being Easter, but I would like to see you tomorrow to see what it is. If this is a growing trend, I will want to see you every day. I know that you are being monitored by your corporate psychiatrist, but I'd like to keep a closer eye on you."

I looked down in an effort to hide the tears in my eyes.

"Babe, you are doing everything you can to protect our baby", said Ranger softly. "Don't look at it as a seven-count increase from two days ago. Look at it as a six-count decrease from yesterday. That's huge."

"It's just not enough."

"You can't think like that", said Ranger. "You have to take the successes and understand the positive steps when you can."

Dr. Wilson helped me lie down, and I pulled up my top and down my waistband so that he could listen to the heartbeat. He measured my bump. "Are you drinking lots of water?" he said.

"I try to have a glass of water every hour except when I am out of the apartment", I said. "It is hard, because it makes me go pee a lot. I feel like I live in the bathroom. When I have to come out, like when I have to come here, I don't drink much beforehand so that I don't have to go pee."

He smiled. "That is normal though, so I'm glad to hear that you are urinating frequently."

He spread on some jelly and moved the Doppler wand around my abdomen. Within seconds, we could hear the whump-whump of Tia's heartbeat. After he recorded the rate on his chart, he said, "I have looked at your ultrasound results. Your baby has dropped and is getting ready for birth. However, she looks happy and healthy in there. Her placenta is in a good condition."

"The technician said that dropping this early can sometimes happen?" I said.

"It can. This is awfully early, but it's not unheard of. Sometimes, especially in first-time pregnancies, the baby can drop quite a bit before the birth."

"Steph has been experiencing cramping", said Ranger. "Is this normal?"

"It could be Braxton-Hicks contractions, or it might be that she has overdone it or twisted the wrong way and has pulled a muscle. Tell me about the cramping. Where is it?"

"It's in my lower back", I said. "I thought Braxton-Hicks contractions weren't supposed to be painful?"

"They aren't. Is the cramping you are experiencing painful?"

"Yes. It's very uncomfortable."

"Is it regular?"

"I guess so. I haven't been timing them, so I can't tell you that it's happening every twenty-four minutes or anything like that. However, they seem to happen about once every half hour."

"How are you dealing with them?"

"I'm just trying to breathe through them. We've only had one prenatal class, but that was one of the things they taught in the class."

"Okay. Let's do an internal and see what is happening." He handed me a sheet. "Take your skirt and underwear off, and I'll be back in a minute."

He left the examining room and I wiggled out of my skirt and panties. I folded them and put them on the counter, lay down on the examining bed and covered my lower half with the sheet. Seconds later, the doctor reentered the examining room. He instructed me to wiggle my way to the end of the bed and to put my feet in the stirrups, and he inserted the speculum and expanded my vaginal walls. Seconds later, he snapped the speculum closed and, as he pulled it out, another wave of cramping washed over me and I arched my back and whimpered slightly. The doctor put his hand on my stomach as I did so. The wave of pain didn't last long, and I was soon settling back down again. "Okay", he said. "Put your panties and skirt back on, and I'll be back in a minute to talk."

He left the room and Ranger helped me off the examining bed. He helped me into my panties and skirt, and I sat on his lap again. "Why didn't you tell me that it was as uncomfortable as it was?" he said quietly.

"I just thought that I was being a wimp", I said. "Besides, it wasn't as bad last night. It's been steadily growing more painful as time goes on."

He massaged the small of my back and I cuddled into him. The massage felt good and I told him that. Ranger smiled, but when I looked at him he looked worried.

The doctor returned to the examining room. "Stephanie, you are in labor. It is the very early stages, and to be honest this could last a while. It could also stop by itself. However, your cervix is getting ready for birth and you have dilated a centimeter. This means a few things. I'd like you to go to the hospital to get a steroid shot. This will develop the baby's lungs faster in case she comes early. While you are in the hospital I'm going to ask them to hook you up to an IV to get a bag of fluids pumped into you. I suspect that you are dehydrated and that is helping cause the contractions. I am hoping that, but giving you fluids, the contractions stop. When you are released from the hospital, I want you to drink two glasses of water every hour, with four before bed and four when you get up. I want you to stop exercising and doing anything other than complete bed rest. No prenatal classes and, although I think you are getting a lot in return from the therapy sessions, I think it would be wise to cancel them."

"I'll ask Livy to come up to our apartment to do the sessions, babe", said Ranger.

"Does she do house calls?" said the doctor in surprise.

"She does when I sign her paychecks", said Ranger with a slight smile.

The doctor laughed. "That would certainly be the ideal. I put Steph's therapy sessions and your ability to keep her calm as the reason that she has been doing as well as she has." He looked at us. "With the measures that you'll be taking you'll be increasing the chances of stopping labor from continuing."

"Will Steph have to stay in the hospital?" said Ranger.

"No, not at this point. If the contractions continue and become more regular and more frequent, then she'll have to be in the hospital to deliver the baby. However, if we can stop the contractions from occurring I'll just monitor her more frequently and we'll hope for the best. I fully anticipate that we'll be able to stop the labor for the meantime, but be prepared for a premature birth. I suspect this little girl isn't going to be content waiting for the next ten weeks to go by before she decides to arrive in the world." He looked at me. "Don't worry, Stephanie. It doesn't do anything good for your blood pressure."

"What will this mean for the baby if she is born this early?" I said.

"If the baby is born this early, she will likely be in the NICU for a few weeks. However, most babies who are born this premature go on to become healthy adults. Neonatal care has come a long way in the last few years, and being born this early doesn't necessarily mean that the baby will have lasting problems in life."

"I had wanted the baby to stay in there until I was at the thirty-seventh week."

"I know, but we've known for weeks now that it was most likely that the baby would be born early. We had thought that she'd have to be induced because of the risks to you, but you've been working hard to protect your health and everything you've been doing has kept you and your baby as healthy as you have been. Instead, it appears as though she will just decide to come early – and that's okay. It's not because you have done something wrong. It's just because she has decided to come early. Make an appointment with the receptionist and I'll see you tomorrow. Give me a minute before you leave, and I'll write up a note to give to the hospital triage to tell them what needs to be done. I'll call you tonight to see how you are doing."

Ranger and I thanked him, and we walked out to the waiting room and met with a worried Morelli. "Thanks for texting me, Joe", said Ranger. "That was definitely one appointment that I wanted to be in on."


	12. Chapter 12

Ranger and I drove home from the hospital three hours later. The saline had done as the doctor had suspected, and the contractions had stopped. The obstetrician at the hospital had checked, and I hadn't dilated more than the one centimeter, so I was happy.

Ranger had called Livy and told her that I'd need house calls for the remainder of my pregnancy. She said that although she knew that we weren't scheduled to meet later that day, she would come up for a session after hours as long as we were back in time. To be honest, I had a lot on my mind and I thought that it would be helpful for me to have the support. There was only so much that I could drop on Ranger's shoulders when he was already as worried as he was.

Ranger also called Miles and cancelled my training sessions for the remainder of my pregnancy. He explained that I would need to start training again when the baby was born to try to recover from the pregnancy, and Miles said that he would be happy to help. I could see that, with his help, I would be regaining my shape quickly. I thought that would be something else that Val would resent me for. She was still working off the weight that she'd gained with Edmund, and he'd been born seven months before.

The doctor had given me the shot to develop Tia's lungs, and he reiterated what Dr. Wilson had said – the baby would likely be born early, but that we'd try to keep her in me as long as we could.

By the time we had returned to Rangeman, I was feeling strung out and anxious. Ranger still looked worried, and I was glad to get up to our apartment. Ranger suggested that I go to bed, and said that he'd work in the office for the rest of the day.

When Ranger had finished tucking me in, he put my tablet on the bedside table, gave me a kiss on my forehead, and left the room. "I'll phone the families", he said as he closed the door.

"Did I tell you that you're my hero?" I yelled out after him, and I could hear his bark of laughter as he crossed over to the den.

I sighed as my body relaxed, and tears came to my eyes as I thought about everything that had happened. I looked at the clock. It was two-thirty, and Livy was scheduled to visit just after five. That gave me just enough time for a good cry and a good sleep, and by the time Livy would arrive I knew that I would be feeling much better.

Like I had predicted, I was feeling much more optimistic when Ranger woke me from my nap at ten to five. I had cried for about an hour before sleeping for the last hour and a quarter, and I could feel that my face was swollen from the residual of my tears. Ranger kissed me awake, and he didn't look any less worried when he saw the evidence of my tears than he had before I had gone down for my nap. He kissed me on my forehead. "It will be okay, babe", he said.

"I know", I said. I clambered up into a sitting position, and I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his neck. I kissed the hollow of his throat and just breathed, just let the scent of Ranger wash over me and calm me down, just let me absorb his peace for a moment. And Ranger just held me. He kissed the top of my head, breathed in my scent, and let my presence ground him. I think he needed it just as much as I did.

After a few minutes, I pulled back. "If I am going to meet with Livy, I'll need to use the washroom first."

Ranger smiled. "I have poured you a tumbler of iced lemon water", he said.

I scrambled out of the bed and ran into the washroom. I hurriedly pulled my pants down and sat, and sighed in relief. "You did have to mention the word 'water', didn't you?"

Ranger laughed.

As I left the ensuite, he said, "I'll leave the apartment until Livy is finished her appointment with you. That way you'll have privacy and you'll be able to lie down on the sofa in the living room and not have to worry about anyone overhearing."

"Thanks, Ranger." I appreciated his sensitivity. It had to be just as hard for Ranger as it was for me, and perhaps was even harder. Whereas I was scared and bored, he was scared and overwhelmed with work. He was trying to balance everything. I didn't know how much more he could take before he exploded. "You said that you were going to talk to the families?"

"I did. I talked to your mom, and she said that, if we wanted to come for Easter, she would make sure there was enough extra food for us. When I thanked her and told her that it wouldn't be happening, she said she understood and that she'd be praying for us. Your grandmother asked if you'd had a chance to look into Arnie's death, and I said you hadn't looked into it. Which is the truth, since Miguel looked into it. She said that she thought that she'd be able to talk your mother into coming and visiting tonight and would ask you again to look into Uncle Arnie's death then, and I could hear your mother tell her that they wouldn't be able to come tonight as she and your dad were going on a date after dinner. I would assume that this means that we'll be seeing your mom and dad tonight."

"I'm not surprised. My mom and dad will want to reassure themselves that I'm okay. Did you call your family as well?"

"I called my parents and texted my siblings. My parents said that anything that we need, just to let them know. I talked to my mother about potentially coming for the first couple of days after Tia comes home from the hospital, just to help us get our feet wet. She started to cry and said that she'd be honored to. I also talked to Tank, Hal and Nate to let them know what was going on." Hal was our Vice-President of Operations and Nate was our Vice-President of Administration and Support Services. "I warned them that I might need to take some time soon, and that I will be working from the home office rather than down on the fifth floor. I also called Morelli and gave him an update."

"Thanks for that. Did Morelli say whether he was able to get the court order to exhume my uncle's grave?"

"He did. They are going to exhume the body tomorrow."

"Oh boy. That won't go over well."

"You can't worry about it, babe. Your aunt was the one that chose to commit fraud. That was her choice, and now she has to reap the consequences of her choice."

"I know."

He helped me down onto the sofa, and he retrieved an extra pillow so that I wasn't lying down completely and would be able to drink my water. He handed me a tumbler with a lid and a straw, and he put another tumbler already prepared with lemon and ice on the coffee table. I smiled. Ranger would always take care of me.

"I asked Ella to bring up dinner for between six-thirty and seven. I figured that would give you enough time to talk to Livy. While you are talking to her, I'm going to meet with Gabriel and have an impromptu session."

I sighed in relief. "I think that's a wonderful idea", I said. Just then, there was a knock on the door and Ranger popped up to answer it. He smiled at Livy and led her into the living room, bent over and gave me a kiss. "I'll see you in about an hour."

He smiled at Livy and kissed me again, then left the apartment.

"How are you feeling?" said Livy. "You've had an interesting day."

I told her everything that had happened that day, from the start of the ultrasound and Morelli's fascination with the images on the screen, to the visit to the doctor's office and the visit to the hospital, to state of my great-uncle's case.

"So let me get this straight", said Livy. "Your great-uncle pretended to die so that he could bilk the insurance company for two million dollars?"

"Exactly. His body is going to be dug up tomorrow and Morelli is hoping to find confirmation that my great-uncle is alive."

"What will that mean for your family?"

"My grandmother will become a holy terror. She has the ability to create stories like you could not imagine."

"I gathered that from the other day."

"I know. That was just a small taste of what my grandmother can do." I told her about my grandmother's claims that I was raped by five men. "Can you imagine something so horrifying as to be gang-raped by five men, and then have to live with everyone knowing? You'd never be able to escape the horror. You'd never be able to recover."

"Your grandmother is very insensitive."

"She didn't used to be. She used to be the most understanding woman in the world. She used to live near us when I was growing up and, when things got tough I always knew that I could go to my grandparents' house and tell my tall tales to my grandmother. But while I was imaginative and I told my grandmother stories, I didn't spread them around the neighborhood."

"Do you think your grandmother thinks that you should understand her need to spread her imaginative stories around because of your active imagination as a child?"

"Maybe, but she should recognize that I was a kid, and I stopped telling her stories when I was about seven."

"Do you still have a wild imagination?"

"I guess I do, but I use that imagination to come up with theories as to what is happening with the skips that I have found. The difference is that I can discern the difference between imagination and reality."

"Do you ever dream about your life with Ranger and Tia?"

"All the time. I also dream about things that we can do with Julie, and even about what it would be like to be pregnant again with a little one in the house."

"Do you want to get pregnant again?"

"I never wanted Tia to be the only child in the house most of the time. I mean, Julie is a great kid, but we only see her one weekend a month. I hope that we'll continue to see her for a block of time during the summers, but I can't count on that. In fact, Ranger and I were talking the other day about potentially giving Julie a summer job when she gets older. She would be a natural to work in the research department and it would be a good thing for her resumé – especially if she continues to want to follow her currently-chosen career path."

"What does she want to do?"

"She wants to go to UPenn for Criminal Studies, then attend law school and, when she graduates as a lawyer, she wants to work for the FBI doing policing on a national stage. With her recent experience of being stalked and her previous experience being kidnapped, she has a better idea than most as to what the FBI does. She also is building up her resumé by going around to various schools to talk about internet safety. She wrote a speech to give, and then worked with the local police department to tweak it until it included all the information that the Miami police wanted presented. She was very happy to note that they hadn't had to do much to it. She has done three speeches so far and she said that they are getting easier and easier with each time she does it. Rachel has gone to see her do them all three times, and she filmed the first time for us. She did a great job, and you could hardly tell that she was as nervous as she was."

"You sound like a very proud mama."

I smiled. "Julie is a wonderful kid, and I am very proud to call her my stepdaughter." I paused. "It still seems weird to me to think of her like that. It still seems odd to me to be married. A wonderful kind of odd, but odd."

Livy laughed. "I understand. It takes a while to get used to being a part of a married couple."

"I know", I said.

"With Ranger's need for privacy, how are you planning on dealing with the baby's birth? Will you register Ranger as a father?"

"I want to, but Ranger feels very strongly that the baby shall be a Plum and that his name isn't on the birth certificate. I can see his point. No matter how much I want Tia to have the Manoso name, I think I'm going to have to give in to Ranger and make the baby a Plum. Thankfully, I'm not extremely traditional. Julie is the only person who truly has to understand, and I think she does. After all, after she was kidnapped two years ago her name was officially changed to Ron's last name of Stone. It just sounds weird – Tia Rose Plum. When I had suggested Tia Rose as her given names, I had always thought that Manoso would be her last name, and Tia Rose Manoso sounds much better than Tia Rose Plum."

"Just think of her as Peanut Plum. That goes together well."

I laughed.

"How is Ranger doing with everything?"

"I don't know. He's meeting with Gabriel right now, and I'm very glad that he has been doing therapy. I know that this situation is tough for him. It seems that I've been rolling from one disaster to another over the past ten months, and it has to be hard on him. He was just starting to calm down after me getting locked in the freezer, and now Tia is potentially being born ten weeks early. That's a quarter of her anticipated pregnancy. Just as much as it's hard on me, I think it's even harder for Ranger. Although it will be tough for us when the baby is born – especially if she is born early – I think in some ways it will be a relief for Ranger. As long as Tia is born healthy, he will be able to calm down and relax for once."

"You're right. I think it probably is hard for him."

"I know. He's balancing worry about the baby; worry about me and my relative safety, both with the pregnancy and outside influences; worry about the company and the recent purchase of Pearl Security; and, worry about my grandmother, what she is saying, and its impacts upon me."

"Everything is going well with the purchase of Pearl Security though, isn't it?"

"Yes, but Ranger has to adapt what he does in his day and his management style. Before, he was a much more active security specialist and less of a manager. Now he has to become a manager and rely on his staff to be the security specialists. It has been a challenging shift for him."

"I can imagine. He makes it look so easy."

"He does, but that's one of the reasons that he's a good manager. He puts a lot of work and a lot of thought into his job, which is why he makes it look easy. People don't see the hours behind the scenes."

"How is he doing with reducing his work hours?"

"Tank has been taking a lot of the overflow, so Ranger has been able to get his workweek down to about fifty hours. This is really good, since a few months ago he was working over a hundred hours. He thinks about work a lot more than he works though. I'd hate to see how many hours that Tank is working. Ranger says that it is about fifty hours a week as well, but I'm not sure if Tank is hiding some of his hours and not reporting them. Ranger doesn't think he is. He said that Hal is now doing Tank's previous job as Vice-President of Operations, and Tank didn't carry many of his responsibilities over. This means that Tank's current job as Executive Vice-President is literally working as Ranger's assistant, and Tank is doing the half of the job that Ranger has sloughed off in order to spend time with me. I know I talked to Tank about it about a week ago, and he said that he is working far less hours than he did before and he is very happy with the reduced demand. With the reduction in time requirement, he's been able to develop a relationship with Amelia, and they both look very happy about that."

"Amelia, your nanny?"

"Yes. It's rather cute. Every time we mention his name she blushes. She really likes him and, as far as I can tell, the feeling is mutual. I'm happy for them. They each deserve someone special in their lives."

"How is Hal doing then?"

"Ranger and Tank put in more people, so Hal is doing okay. Tank hired some client managers prior to switching jobs, and they have taken a huge chunk of responsibility from Hal's portfolio. I mean, he is still ultimately responsible for client relations, but with the client managers in place he is overseeing the program rather than being responsible for the day-to-day interaction with the clients. Additionally, Ranger has given more responsibility to the departmental heads. For instance, a year ago Tank was in charge of triage on the research requests, and he siphoned them through in the proper order. However, now I am – or while I'm on leave, Miguel is – responsible for triaging them and figuring out what requests should be done in what order. It's better for Hal and it's better for us as department heads. It makes our jobs more interesting."

"You saw Miguel and Dirk yesterday. How are they finding managing the department?"

"They are doing a good job, but they said that they are looking forward to me coming back. Miguel said that he liked to be second-in-command, and that he didn't particularly like being the head of the department."

Livy smiled. "How did that make you feel?"

"Relieved. They are doing a good job, but I'm looking forward to going back and taking over again. It would make it hard if Miguel or Dirk were gunning for the position."

"How has your mood been?"

I paused.

"I notice that you are smiling, but your eyes are sad", she said. "Are you sad?"

"Yes, and I'm anxious", I said slowly. Livy waited. She knew from the past that I didn't talk about upsetting feelings easily. "I'm worried about Ranger. I'm worried about Tia. I'm worried about me. I've been so focused on getting the baby to the thirty-seventh week mark that I feel like a failure for her coming early. I feel like it is my fault."

"Because you were dehydrated?"

"Yes. I'm one centimeter dilated, and it was all because I didn't drink enough."

"Yes, but did you know that you would start contractions if you didn't drink enough water?"

I shook my head morosely.

"Then I don't think it was your fault. If you didn't know, you didn't do it on purpose."

"I know."

"How else do you feel?"

I thought for a moment. "I feel hopeless." I blew out an unhappy breath.

"Tell me about feeling hopeless."

"I just feel like, no matter what I do, Tia is in danger, and it just seems so hopeless. I don't feel like I'm in control, and I feel like a failure and worthless as a person." I paused. "Being a mother is so fundamentally feminine. It feels like the epitome of being a woman. What kind of woman am I if I can't even carry a baby to term?"

"A normal one. Ten percent of women have trouble getting pregnant or staying pregnant. Does that make them less of a woman?"

"No. But those are other people."

"What makes you so different?" She paused as my eyes filled with tears. "Yes, you are having a troubled pregnancy, but that doesn't mean that you are any less of a woman than any of those other ten percent. And those are just the women that can't get pregnant or have trouble successfully carrying a baby through to delivery. Another percentage of women have troubled pregnancies. Just because you're having challenges doesn't mean that you're less of a woman. It just means that this pregnancy is causing problems. Don't make it into something it isn't."

I shuddered in a breath. "I'm just so scared."

"I know."

I swiped my eyes and reached for my water, and took a deep drink.

"Tell me about being scared", said Livy.

"I'm just terrified that the baby will die, and now that I'm used to the idea of having a baby I very much want her. But probably more than that is a worry over what will happen with Ranger and me if this baby dies."

"What will happen between Ranger and you?"

"I guess there is a big part of me that is worried that Ranger is only with me for the baby, and if I wasn't pregnant he wouldn't be interested in settling down with me."

"Do you honestly think that is true?"

"I worry that it's true."

"Let's take that thought out and test drive it for a moment. What makes you think that Ranger would leave you without the baby there?"

I shuddered in another breath, and I swiped more tears from my face. "Look at Ranger. He's the whole package. He is kind, compassionate, generous. He's successful and the hottest looking man that I have ever seen. He's perfect. I'm just me."

"I haven't known you long, but I have gotten to know you quite well", said Livy. "From what I can see, you also are kind, compassionate and generous. You're successful and hard-working, and you are absolutely beautiful. I'm sure that Ranger is wondering why you are with him just as much as you are wondering why he is with you."

I sniffled. "I'm worthless. He could do so much better."

"Why do you think that you are worthless?" She paused. "Is it because you are having a troubled pregnancy?"

I paused, and said, "in part."

"So the other ten percent of the women out there are worthless too?"

"No."

"Then what makes you so special?"

I shrugged and sniffled some more.

Livy got up and retrieved the box of tissues. "Steph, preeclampsia just happens. There is no rhyme or reason to it, but in five to eight percent of pregnancies it just happens. This is not your fault. It is not caused by something that you have done, nor has it been caused by a personality defect. It was just the luck of the draw."

"My sister carried five babies to term successfully."

"So? Don't compare yourself to Val. Do you really think that she's a good person to compare yourself against? From what I've heard, she's a bit of a train wreck. She drinks too much and lets jealousy rule her life. She has chosen to marry a child and has five other children to emotionally support. Let her have her perfect pregnancies. That's all she has, and she knows it."

"She'll rub in the fact that the baby was born early."

"So? She can rub it in. It doesn't mean that you'll be a lesser mother. It just means the baby is born early."

"I just feel so worthless and guilty over the baby coming early. I feel like my sister is standing on the sidelines making fun of me, like she is saying that I couldn't even do that." I swiped away some tears. "It's the most basic of human functions, procreation, and I couldn't even do that right."

Livy got up, picked up my empty water tumbler, and refilled it from the dispenser in the fridge door. She returned to the living room and handed it to me as I pulled another tissue from the box. "That's not your voice saying that", she said. "That's not Ranger's voice, it's not my voice and it's not your obstetrician's voice. I doubt it's your friend Joe's voice, or Amelia's voice, or even your mother's or father's voice. Whose voice is it?"

I sniffled again and thought for a moment. "I think it's my sister's."

"I think it is as well", said Livy. "Do you really think that your sister deserves to have a voice? After all, if all those other people are supporting you and telling you that it's not your fault, do you really think that the one naysayer should be given a voice?"

I thought about that for a moment. "I guess not", I said.

"I don't think so either." She looked at the time. "I'm sorry, Steph, but Ranger will be returning soon and I thought you might like to practice some meditation for a few minutes before he returns."

I swiped the remaining tears from my face. "Let's do it", I said with a shaky smile.


	13. Chapter 13

As I lay on the sofa after dinner sipping water and Ranger finished talking to the obstetrician, I thought about my Spanish lessons. I was getting frustrated with learning via the tablet. It seemed that I had been working at it for six weeks, and I had very little Spanish to show for it. I sighed. At the rate I was going, I would never be able to learn how to speak Spanish.

When Ranger came through after cleaning up the kitchen, I said, "Ranger?"

"Yes, babe?"

"I had planned on giving you a surprise, but it hasn't been working out as well as I would like."

"You don't need to give me any surprises."

"I'd still like to do it, but I will need your help." I felt tentative in asking. I know that he was a good trainer, but that didn't mean that he'd like to teach me Spanish. I guess my tentativeness showed in my voice.

Ranger positioned himself so that he was sitting beside me, and so that his legs were cushioning my head. He handed me my water. "Anything", he said.

"I was trying to teach myself Spanish. I doubt I'll ever get really good at it. Languages aren't my strength. But I'd like you to teach the baby Spanish, and if I want to know what you are saying to the baby, I'd like to learn Spanish as well. Besides, it would be cool to be able to speak another language with you, don't you think?"

"You've been teaching yourself Spanish?" He smiled, and I could tell how touched he was that I had made the effort.

"I have been doing lessons on the tablet, but I can't seem to remember the words longer than half an hour. I have done all the lessons in the series three times, and I have retained very little. It's extremely frustrating. I had wanted to surprise you and say a sentence or two to you in Spanish, but it's not working out that way. I was thinking that maybe, if you teach me a little each day, it might be easier to learn how to speak Spanish than it is to learn it off the tablet."

He lifted my hand and kissed it. "You don't have to do this to make me happy."

"I know, but I want to do this."

"This is how you've spent your time while you've been on bed rest?"

"Yeah." I paused and tensed up. I couldn't read his reaction. "You're not mad, are you?"

Ranger smiled. "Mad? Hell, no. I think it's the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me."

I relaxed again.

"Gracias."

I smiled. "I know what that means", I said.

Ranger grinned.

"Tu eres la luz en mi vida."

"Okay, that definitely wasn't covered in my lessons."

Ranger laughed. "You are the light in my life." He paused. "Te amo."

Tears came to my eyes and I smiled. "I love you too."

"That's the most important phrase for you to know of all", said Ranger. I twisted my head and kissed his thigh. He smoothed my hair away from my face.

The phone rang, and Ranger told one of the security guards on staff to escort my parents to our apartment. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the front door and Ranger got up, welcomed my parents, and led them into the living room. He offered them juice and water, and both my parents chose some juice.

Ranger prepared the drinks as my parents came over and gave me hugs and kisses. "How are you doing?" said my father.

"I've been better, but the contractions have stopped so that is good. I'm just worried now."

"I know", said my mother. "However, it is in God's hands. Little Tia just might be a little more determined to come out than many babies, and that's okay. She might get her determination from you. You were born early as well." She turned to accept her beverage from Ranger, and he put my father's on the coaster beside his seat.

"I was? How far along was I?"

"You were born at thirty-seven weeks. You came into the world kicking and squalling, and you made sure that everyone knew that you were happy to be alive."

"I had wanted Tia to be born after thirty-seven weeks."

"She'll be born when she is ready to be born", said my mother. "You were always anxious to get in on the action, and your daughter may be as well. And that's okay."

"I feel like a failure."

"That's nonsense", said my mother. "Just because you have a determined baby who has decided that it is more fun to be out of the womb than in, doesn't mean that you're a failure. It just means that you have a determined baby. I was reading sun signs the other day, and it would be good if you have a Taurus baby. They are supposed to be headstrong, but they are also supposed to be caring and loving and loyal."

"What about if she's a Gemini?"

"Gemini's are supposed to be a bit flighty and artistic, and less able to settle on any one position. Knowing your personality, I don't know if you'd get along with a Gemini baby." I laughed. "After all, your grandmother is a Gemini, and I don't know if you want another Edna in your life."

Ranger groaned. "Heaven help us", he said.

My mother laughed and my father smiled. "Your grandmother keeps talking about seeing Uncle Arnie", she said.

"We've told her that I haven't looked into it", I said.

"I know. How could you, when you were supposed to be resting?"

"I actually had one of my staff look into it", I said. "And because of what he found, it is now a police investigation. Joe and Ranger and I are trying not to let Grandma know, as she would stick her nose into the investigation and cause problems."

"Uncle Arnie really is alive?" said my mother in shock.

I smiled. "He's alive and well and has been living in Arizona but has come back to help Aunt Betty pack the house."

"That explains why she has rejected all our offers to help", said my mother.

"Figures", said my father. "I may have a sexual pervert on my side of the family, but at least he hasn't broken any laws." My father was referring to my cousin Vinnie, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that he'd broken the law many times – each time, in fact, that he'd had sex with an animal. There were some things that my father didn't need to know.

"See what you married into?" I said to Ranger with a smile.

Ranger thought about smiling. "Every family has its skeletons", he said. "That's just what makes families interesting."

I groaned. "My family, I think, is more interesting than most."

Ranger laughed as he turned to my parents. "Would you like to see the nursery? We finished decorating it last night."

My parents grinned and got to their feet, and followed Ranger into Tia's bedroom. "This is beautiful", said my mother. I could hear the tears in her voice. They looked around, and then came out to sit with me again.

"That will be a wonderful room to bring the baby back to", said my father. "I was looking online this afternoon at things that premature babies need, and one of them is an area where they aren't as stimulated to sleep in. Having a room to themselves where you can limit the noise around them and limit the brightness will be important." I stared at my father, and my mother turned to stare at him as well. My father flushed. "What?" he said. "I was concerned."

Ranger took pity on my father first. "That's what I've read as well, and since the chances are high that we're having a preemie, it will be especially important for us to provide a calm environment for Tia to come home to. That's one of the reasons we don't have a mobile, and we have a soft light next to the rocker to keep on for nursing during the night. Friends of ours, Wes and Liz, gave us four receiving blankets that were a little larger than the norm so that it would be easier to swaddle Tia. This evening, before bed, Steph and I were planning on buying some preemie clothes online. If the baby is as premature as we suspect, it will be some time before she fits into the newborn clothes."

"How big is the baby now? Do you know?" said my father.

"She's about three pounds and the size of a large cabbage", I said. "She can blink, has fingernails, can see light and dark. The doctor gave me a shot to develop the baby's lungs more quickly in case she is born early. A baby's lungs aren't typically developed until much later in the pregnancy."

My father nodded.

"This is exciting", said my mother. "We might get to meet Tia sooner than we had expected."

Ranger handed me my second tumbler of water in an unspoken prodding to continue to drink.

"I don't think it is exciting as much as scary", I said.

"I wonder if labor will hurt as much if you are pushing out a smaller baby?" said my father.

I paused. "I don't know", I said. "What I do know though is that the contractions today were uncomfortable."

"I know they were", said Ranger. "I could see that in your face."

My dad looked a little distressed to think that I was in pain, and he looked like he didn't want to go when my mother told him a few minutes later that they'd left my grandmother long enough. She turned to us. "Your father and I have decided, even when we aren't coming to visit you, that we'll get out together, just the two of us, at least once a week. It has been good for us to spend time together without your grandmother around. We're rediscovering some of the reasons we got married in the first place."

My father flushed. "When we've been leaving here, we've been going out for pie and coffee and just to talk together. There's a diner near here that serves good pie. It's been nice."

My mom slipped her hand into my father's. "Yes, it has", she said with a smile.

I grinned. I could see that my parents were working better together than they had in years. Before, my parents had a routine. My father pretended to be the head of the household, and my mother did what she could to help the illusion. However, my mother was the undisputed head of the household no matter how she treated my father, and everyone knew it.

However, I had never really seen the two of them as a couple. They orbited around life separately. My mother's life was her family and then her friends; my father's life was his friends and then his family. Yes, they shared a room at night and yes, both of them cared deeply about their family, but that seemed to be all they had in common. They were happy, but they weren't really together.

However, just then? Just when I saw my mother slip her hand into my father's and smile softly at him? I could see the love that they shared. I could see why they had gotten married in the first place, and it was nice to see that they were rediscovering that.

I had never really thought about the impact of my grandmother's presence on my parents' marriage. Mom had always lived for us kids. Dad had always had outside interests, whether that was work or his friends at the club. My grandmother had slipped into their lives with a splash, and my father had adapted to the intrusion with a fair bit of grace. Yes, sometimes you could see him plotting her murder, and sometimes you could see him daydreaming about her being hit by a bus. However, for the most part he had resigned himself to my grandmother's presence.

However, my grandmother wouldn't last forever and it was nice to know that my parents would still have a relationship when my grandmother had passed on.

I looked at my parents as they were getting ready to go. "Talking about Uncle Arnie and knowing that he was a mortician reminds me of the story of the eighty-year old woman who was getting married for the fourth time."

"She was?" said my father. His ears had perked up and he smiled. "Do you think that someone might be interested in our old bag of bones?"

"Frank!" said my mother. But she was smiling.

I grinned. "This lady was getting married for the fourth time, and was being interviewed on the radio. The announcer said, 'you've been married four times. Can you tell me a bit about each one?' The lady thought for a moment and said, 'the first one was a banker, the second a circus ringmaster, the third a minister and the fourth, the person I am marrying on Saturday, is a mortician.' The announcer was amazed and said, 'that is quite a diverse group of men! What made you pick each of them?' 'Well', said the old woman, 'I was following that old adage. One for the money, two for the show, three to get married and four to go."

My father and Ranger groaned, and my mother laughed. She picked up her purse and came over to me. As I struggled to my feet, she stopped me and kissed my cheek. "Stay put, baby girl, and take care of yourself."

She stood back and my father gave me a kiss. "Call if you need us for anything", he said. "It doesn't take long to get here."

I looked at them and tears came to my eyes. "Thanks, guys", I said with a smile.


	14. Chapter 14

Ranger and I looked online and bought a number of preemie outfits. While we had originally intended to buy unisex ones – after all, according to the doctor, if I had another baby the chances of having preeclampsia again were much higher than someone who hadn't had the condition, and with preeclampsia the chances of the baby being born a preemie were higher. Since there was no guarantee that the baby would be a girl the second time around, it made sense to buy unisex clothes…but there were so many cute baby girl clothes. By the time we had finished shopping, we'd put a number of adorable preemie girl clothes in the cart. A lot that we bought were bodysuits and pants and cardigans, but we also bought several sleepers, and one dress to bring Tia home from the hospital in.

We bought the clothes through Amazon, and they were scheduled to be delivered within two days. I was relieved. Ella would be able to wash them and get them ready so that Tia would be ready to come home. For some reason, I needed to be ready in case Tia was born soon. I didn't know why, but I thought it was imperative to be ready.

I yawned as I put aside my tablet, and Ranger smiled at me. "Are you tired, babe?" he said.

I nodded. "I don't know why. I've hardly done anything today."

"Yes, but pregnancy will make you tired and, although you napped for an hour, your nap was shorter today and your day was more stressful."

"Are you ready for bed?"

Ranger looked at me softly. "I think that I'll stay up for a while. I have a few things to do for the office, and I didn't get a chance to do them today. I might have to do this more often over the next few weeks. I won't want to miss any doctor's appointments from now on until the birth, but that is a huge chunk of time that I will have to make up if I am to stay on top of the work."

"I'm sorry", I said. I felt bad to be causing Ranger difficulties, and I knew what a demand on his time it was to go to all my appointments with me.

Ranger kissed me softly. "Never apologize for something that is out of your control", he said. "It's not your fault. As your mother said, it just means that Tia is a little more headstrong than many babies, and she is determined to come out sooner rather than later."

I sighed. "It seems astonishing to me that we might soon have our baby in our arms."

Ranger thought about smiling. "I will like having all my girls together. I know that Julie is excited about the baby. I sent her an email telling her everything that had happened today, and she wrote back and said that her last day of school is the third of June, and she could come any time after that point. She said that, if the baby was here, she didn't really want to wait until the end of the month to come with her mother and Ron."

I smiled. "I'm pleased that she's so excited."

Ranger helped me off the sofa and walked with me to the bedroom. "So am I, actually. She seems to take after Rachel and love babies. She said that she just finished taking an infant first aid and CPR course. Apparently, Rachel had suggested that she take the class so that she was prepared to be a big sister in all ways. Julie said that she and Rachel and Ron were going out shopping for things for the baby tonight. Apparently Rachel and Ron were just as excited as Julie about Tia coming."

"She'll be a good big sister."

"I think she will", said Ranger. "She's going to hate going home at the end of the summer."

"Or, she might be happy to get a full night's sleep", I said with a laugh.

Ranger smiled.

I went into the bathroom and drank four glasses of water. I felt like I was floating, and I was happy to use the facilities and get rid of all the previous water that I had consumed. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and walked out of the bathroom a few moments later. Ranger had picked out a maternity nightgown and handed it to me, and after I changed he held back the duvet and let me slide under the sheets. I lay on my left side, and Ranger sat on the edge of the bed beside me. He massaged the small of my back. "Does your back still feel cramp-y?" he said.

"No. I mean, it's a little tired, but I think that's from lying down so much. My body is uncomfortable from not moving. I hate to say this, but I'm missing being able to move so much that I am even missing being on the treadmill. Maybe not running, but I do miss walking on the treadmill."

Ranger smiled. "I'll have you running on the treadmill before you know it."

I sighed. "You know, I hadn't wanted to gain more than thirty pounds with this pregnancy."

"How much have you gained?"

"Thirty-one pounds, but I still have another ten weeks to go. If I go full-term and continued to gain as much weight as I have been, I will have gained sixty pounds."

"Yes, but you aren't gaining it because of eating gravy at every meal." My sister had gained eighty pounds with each pregnancy, and I put that down to her cravings for gravy. She would eat it poured over her corn flakes for breakfast and over vanilla ice cream for dessert and, if she didn't have gravy as part of her meal, she'd drink it by the tumbler-full to accompany her dinner. My mother would make her huge batches of gravy and take them over to her house every few days. In fact, with her love of gravy, I had always been surprised that my sister had been able to limit her weight gain to eighty pounds. "You are gaining it with water retention. That means that, after the baby is born, the chances are more likely that your body will get rid of the excess water, your blood pressure will return to normal, and you'll quickly lose the weight again. It's all good, babe."

"You think it will all even itself out?"

"From everything I have read, for most women the symptoms of preeclampsia resolve itself within about six weeks. I'm just glad that, so far, it has been a mild case of preeclampsia rather than a severe one."

"I can't imagine being as sick as some women get."

"I hope you never have to. But what I can say is that you are doing everything that you can to help our baby and to protect your health, and I can't ask you to do more than that." He nodded to the bedside table. "I have put a tumbler of water on your nightstand so that, if you wake up, you can sip on something to quench your thirst. I know that you just drank four glasses of water, but I think it would be a good idea to drink more throughout the night as well." He bent over and kissed me softly. "Que sueñes con los angelitos. Dream with the little angels."

I closed my eyes as he turned out my light. "That sounds pretty."

"Te amo."

"I love you too."

Ranger kissed me lightly on the lips once more, then got up and left the bedroom for the den. I think I was asleep before he made it through the door.

I woke up the next morning snuggled into Ranger's arms. Ranger was stroking my tummy, and Tia kicked him a few times. Her kicks were lower in my belly, and I could feel that she had dropped by the location of her kicks. She was now, much more than ever, kicking me on my bladder.

I struggled upright and ran to the bathroom, just making it in time. I had what felt like the longest pee ever. My bladder had been stretched to its maximum and I knew that, if Tia had kept kicking, I would have had a wet bed.

I washed my hands and walked out of the bathroom at a much more sedate pace. Ranger smiled at me. "Better?" he said.

I smiled. "Much. I don't think I like drinking four glasses of water before bedtime."

"I know. You were even up a few times in the night."

"I was. What time did you come to bed?"

"Two. I wanted to get ahead in my work so that I could take the morning off to go to the obstetrician's with you."

"God, you must be tired. It's six-thirty. Wait – why are you up here? It's six-thirty. You're normally in the gym at this time."

"I know, but with working until two this morning I thought it would be better if I spend the time sleeping rather than working out." He cradled my cheek in his hand and smoothed his thumb over my lips. "Don't look so worried, babe. I'll be okay, and I was thinking that, when you were napping later, I would work out then."

"Is this going to be our new routine?"

"Probably for the next little while. I'll sleep in with you and have breakfast, and then we can get ready for the day and I'll get you to your medical appointments. When we come back I'll work for a while, then have a workout before dinner, have dinner, and then work for the evening. It means that I won't be able to take the evenings off the same if I am taking the mornings off, but I want to keep as up to date on the work as I can so that I can take some time off when Tia is born. I hope you don't mind."

I smiled. "No, I don't. I figure that it's a short-term pain for long-term gain. I understand why you are taking the time off."

"I feel bad."

"Don't feel bad. If I had my choice, I'd rather you take time off after the baby is born."


	15. Chapter 15

Our doctor's appointment went well. My pressure was falling again, and was down to 140/85. Dr. Wilson was pleased. We listened to the baby's heartbeat, and Tia didn't sound like she was in distress. Dr. Wilson was pleased about that as well. He did an internal and, as I pulled my clothes back on, he said, "you haven't had the benefit of prenatal classes, so you aren't familiar with the signs of labor starting. I know that you already know some of these, but you'll know when you're in pre-labor if the baby drops and your cervix dilates. We know the baby has already dropped, and your cervix has dilated two centimeters now. Your cervix is thinning and getting ready for birth. Like you experienced yesterday, you'll have cramps and increased back pain. Your joints may feel looser and you may have diarrhea. You may have a nesting instinct. This pre-labor can happen up to a month or more before the final show. As labor starts, your vaginal discharge may change color and consistency – you may have a bloody show and you may notice some of the mucus plug released. And, of course, you'll have stronger and more frequent contractions and your water breaks.

"When you are in labor and you know that you're in labor, I want you to go into the hospital. I know on all the movies they say not to go into the hospital until the contractions are five minutes apart, but I will want to monitor you and your baby as you are in labor.

"So far, the baby is doing alright in there, but I will want to see you every day now for the remainder of your pregnancy. As your baby comes closer to term, your pressure may increase no matter what we do. I've gone over the warning signs that say that you have to get to the hospital if your preeclampsia gets out of control, didn't I?"

Ranger stood and let me sit on the guest chair. I leaned into his body and said, "that was the headache, vision changes, abdominal pain and so on?"

The doctor nodded. "It's important to remember those. If any of those things happens, I want you to go to the hospital immediately."

He pulled out his prescription pad and wrote a phone number on it. "I don't normally hand this out, but this is my cell phone number. I keep my cell phone on me at all times when I'm not in the office. If you have any problems or aren't sure whether you should go to the hospital, call me. I don't care if it is the middle of the night, I want to hear from you. If, for some odd reason you can't get in touch with me, go to the hospital. I know it seems too soon, but your body is showing signs that your baby doesn't think so, and she's showing signs that she wants to come out. With your preeclampsia, it might be the best thing for you."

"What about sex?" said Ranger.

"Avoid it. There are a few things that people can do to try to start labor. One of those is to have sex, either oral or penetrative. Another is to eat spicy foods. Another is to exercise. There are a whole host of things that can be done. There is often no scientific proof that these methods work, but on the other hand why rock the boat? On the off chance they do work, it makes sense to avoid them."

"Okay", I said. I tried to envision the next ten weeks without sex, and I could feel my spirits plummet. Ranger reached down and massaged the base of the back of my neck, and I knew that he knew how frustrating this 'no sex' rule would be for me.

"I want you to continue to keep your feet up and lie down on your left side as much as possible. Were you able to ask your therapist to make house calls?"

"She didn't mind at all", I said. "She came for her first session yesterday."

"That's good. Keep up on your appointments with your therapist as I believe that your therapy sessions are one of the prime reasons your blood pressure has stayed as constant as it has. Otherwise, it is as I told you yesterday. As close to complete bed rest as you can make it. What are your plans for Easter?"

"Ranger will be working", I said. "We purposely haven't planned any family functions. I mean, we've been invited to my parents' for Easter, and we've been invited to Ranger's parents for Easter, but we decided that we'd prefer a quiet time at home with just the two of us. Ranger is going to cook a turkey with all the trimmings, since I've had a craving for turkey recently. We're having the turkey dinner on Saturday, as we're having Joe over for dinner and he has family things to do on Friday. He's the other gentleman who has often accompanied me to my appointments."

"The police officer?"

"Yes. It should be a relaxed weekend, but a good weekend."

"Good. Take time to sleep and remember to drink lots of water. I'll see you on Monday. What time am I seeing you?"

"From now on", I said, "we have appointments to see you every day at ten in the morning, and we have a standing appointment for an ultrasound on Fridays at eight-thirty, and blood work following that."

"Okay. I hope you have a good weekend and, if you don't end up having the baby this weekend, I'll see you on Monday."

"So you think the baby is likely to come?"

"You have many of the symptoms of pre-labor. But pre-labor can happen for a month or more before labor starts. I'm not saying that the baby is likely to come. But I am saying that it is possible for the baby to come. Do you have any questions for me?"

Ranger and I shook our heads, and the doctor smiled. "Then have a good weekend", he said. He stood, and we followed him out of the examining room.

Ranger held my hand as we left the doctor's office, and we took the elevator down to the main floor and walked out of the medical building. The weather was nice. The sun was getting stronger and I pushed my blazer sleeves up my forearms, and I turned my face up to catch some rays. "How are you doing, babe?" asked Ranger. I guess he was getting worried. It was unusual for me to be so quiet.

"Good. I'm enjoying the sun. I'm trying not to think about the 'not having sex' thing for the next ten weeks."

Ranger smiled. "It will be longer than ten weeks, babe. After the baby is born, you won't be cleared to have sex for a while."

I blanched. "For how long?"

"I'm not sure if I remember correctly or not, but I think it is about six weeks, and longer if you have a C-section."

"I don't want a C-section."

"I don't think anyone wants a C-section, babe. It's major surgery. However, if you or the baby is in distress, then a C-section is the best thing for you to do."

I sighed. "I know. I'm trying not to think about it. I already feel like a failure for being unable to carry the baby to term. I don't want to think that I might need a C-section."

"Babe, needing a C-section isn't indicative of anything you did or didn't do. It just would be. Just like Tia wanting to be born before her forty weeks are up. That isn't anything you did or didn't do that is causing this. It's just Tia wanting to be born soon."

We got to the car and Ranger held the door for me. He waited as I got settled and put on my seatbelt, and then softly shut the door. He crossed over to the other side, and as he got into the car, I guess he could tell that I was upset because he said, "your mom said something interesting yesterday."

"She did?"

"She mentioned the baby's sun sign. Have you looked into the baby's sun sign and what it means at all?"

"I thought you didn't believe in that?"

"I don't. It's kind of fun though, to look into."

I smiled and pulled out my phone, and I clicked into a site. "This says that she'll be emotionally strong and able to handle huge amounts of stress. However, when her breaking point is breached, her temper is hot and fierce. She'll be independent, loyal, introverted, artistic, genuine, tomboyish, passive-aggressive, intelligent, caring and loving, and good with finances. She sounds like she'll be a lovely child."

Ranger smiled. "We are just starting the Taurus sun sign, aren't we?"

"Yes. If Tia is born at some point over the next four weeks, she'll be a Taurus. After that, she'll be a Gemini."

"What sun sign are you?"

"I'm a Libra." I smiled. "I'm supposed to be selfless and extroverted and loving and be someone who enjoys helping others."

"Hunh", said Ranger. "Maybe there is something to this zodiac stuff after all. That describes you perfectly."

I put away my phone as Ranger pulled into the Rangeman parking lot. "Thank you", I said. I wasn't sure if I was thanking him for the compliment or for providing a diversion to me from my upset feelings – and maybe it didn't matter.

Ranger parked in his spot next to the elevators. I looked over at the Rangeman vehicle parked in my spot. "We'll have to buy a family car soon."

"That can wait until after the baby is born."

"We'll have to buy a car seat too."

"I can go out this afternoon while you are having your nap to buy a car seat."

"It will have to be one that is suitable for preemies", I said.

"Okay. I'll go to the store later today. Is there anything else that we need?"

"Diapers and diaper cream? I don't know what kind of cream is the best."

"I'll phone Celia and ask her."

"We need some burp cloths as well, and a diaper bag."

"Okay. So burp cloths, diaper bag, diapers, cream, and a car seat."

"I think that's it."

We got out of the car and walked hand-in-hand to the elevator. Ranger smiled. "I'll just have a look around when I am there, and I'll buy what I think we'll need."

I laughed, but part of me was envious. I wanted to go shopping with Ranger. But the other part of me was happy that he had a chance to pick some of the things that the baby would use. He was just as excited about the baby as I was, and I was happy that he had the chance to look around the store and do some shopping. Just judging by Ranger's desire to buy baby things, I thought that I wasn't the only one who wanted to nest.


	16. Chapter 16

I had to laugh when I woke up from my nap. Ranger was struggling into the apartment with his third load from the baby store. He looked so pleased with himself. "Is there anything left in the store for anyone else to buy?" I said with a smile.

Ranger looked at the ground at all the stuff that he'd bought. "It didn't look like that much when I was in the store", he said a bit sheepishly.

I laughed again. "What did you get?"

Ranger looked excited again. "Lots."

I grinned. "I gathered that."

Ranger smiled and started to take things out of their bags. He'd bought a portable playpen, a bouncy chair, a diaper genie, baby shampoo, a stuffed giraffe rattle, a baby bath, baby washcloths, another two soft jersey fitted crib sheets, a nursing pillow, breast pads – and the car seat, two packages of burp pads, the diaper bag, three boxes of diapers in three separate sizes, and the cream that he had gone for.

"Holy crap!" I said when the things were displayed in front of me. "I didn't realize that we needed so much, but you were right and we did need all those things. Thank you for doing all that shopping."

"I enjoyed it. I was going to go to Costco and get books, but I thought that might be something that you'd like to do. I missed having you there when I was buying all this stuff." He looked sad. "I had always thought that we'd do it together."

I smiled. "I know. I have to admit that I was envious – not jealous, but envious – but then I thought that you should have the fun of going shopping while I had the fun of carrying her. It was only fair."

"You didn't mind?"

"I did at first, but then I thought about it and decided that I was grateful that you were doing all that work. You could have left it to me and I would have had to figure out what to buy online, and not have the benefit of seeing the items in front of me. It would have been harder, so I was thankful that you didn't mind doing the shopping while I couldn't."

"There were things that I wanted to get that I didn't. I thought they weren't essential and that we could shop for them together after the baby was born."

"What could we possibly need that we don't have here?"

"The one that I really was attracted to was an exersaucer. I thought that looked like fun for the baby, but I was talking to a mother in the store and she said that it was only good for when the baby could sit up on her own. There were some toys that I thought looked good, and I wondered about a baby gym, which would be good for when she can see clearly and gets a little older. The mother that I was talking to suggested a baby carrier, the kind of backpack that holds the baby next to your chest, but I thought that looked uncomfortable."

"I was reading a paper by a pediatric orthopedic surgeon that said those were no good for the baby. In their experience, they cause too much strain on the baby's pelvis."

"I watched a few mothers in the store that had them – they are apparently a popular item – and the mothers seemed not to support the baby's head properly in them, and their heads were lolling around unsupported. It looked like it would give the baby neck problems later in life, so I'm glad you don't want one."

"Jolly jumpers are bad for the same reason."

"I thought a swing would be nice, but again I thought that might be something you'd want to get for the baby yourself."

"I am thrilled with what you did buy." I smiled. "And I appreciate that you left some things in the store for us to buy later."

Ranger grinned. "I'll put the things away, and I can smell dinner in the warming drawer. Let's eat after I get everything organized."

As Ranger got up to put the baby's things away, there was a knock on the door. Ranger walked through and opened it, and greeted Morelli. "Did you know that it was dinner?" he said. I could tell that he was smiling. "Come in and join us."

Morelli came through to the living room and looked around the area. "Holy crap! Did you buy out the store?"

I laughed. "That was my reaction when Ranger came home as well", I said.

"What?" said Ranger. "These were all things that we needed for the baby to come home."

Morell looked around him. "Does the baby have a swing yet?" he said. "My nieces and nephews loved theirs."

"No, that was one of the few things that Ranger left in the store", I said.

"Don't buy one then", said Morelli. "I'd like to buy the baby a swing for her welcome-to-the-world present."

"You don't have to do that", I said.

Morelli smiled. "I know I don't have to, but I want to buy something special for her." He turned to me. "Does this recent shopping trip mean that you are still dilating?"

"A bit. I'm up to two centimeters, and the doctor said that the baby could come any day. We're hoping to keep her in there for a while longer yet."

"If anyone can, it would be you, cupcake. You are one of the most determined women that I have ever met."

I smiled. "I'll take that as a compliment."

Morelli smiled. "Good. It was meant as one. So what does the doctor recommend that you do?"

"Same as before. Drink lots of water, lie down as much as possible and sleep as much as I can."

"That's doable, isn't it?"

"Yes", I said. "It's boring but doable."

"What have you been doing to fill your time?"

"I've been trying to learn Spanish. I was hoping to wow Ranger by speaking whole sentences to him by now, but despite me working at it I only know a few words. I gave up yesterday and asked Ranger to teach me."

"You might as well use the resource."

"I'm just touched that she wants to learn", said Ranger as he walked through after putting away the last of the baby's things. "That means a lot to me."

"I want the baby to be bilingual as well", I said. "I think that will be good for her, and it would be giving her an advantage that she might not otherwise have. I mean, I could have been bilingual if my father had taught me Italian, but all I learned were swear words."

"I didn't learn much Italian either", said Morelli.

"Besides, I think it would be good for her brain development to learn another language. I know that Julie has learned Spanish in school, and when she is with her father she practices a bit. Ranger wants her to be fluent by the time she graduates college. If she continues to want to go into policing as a career, having a second language will only do good things for her."

"Is she doing well in her lessons?" said Morelli.

Ranger smiled with pride. "She is. She is consistently getting the highest mark in the class."

"I'm hoping that she'll help teach me this summer as well", I said. "Between Ranger and Julie, I hope to know a few words by the time that summer is over." I turned to Ranger. "I was thinking that we could have Spanish nights, when our dinner is eaten with just speaking Spanish. It will be hard for you when I can't understand, but that sort of immersion seems to work on kids at school so I hope to be able to pick up some of the language. I've been watching Spanish kids' shows on television, and I'm starting to be able to pick out some of the words."

"That's great!" said Ranger. "Dinner is ready, so wash your hands and come to the table." He turned to Morelli as we walked into the kitchen. "Are you still okay with coming for dinner on Saturday?"

"I'm looking forward to it", said Morelli.

"We're having turkey", said Ranger. "I know that ham is more traditional, but Steph has been craving turkey lately."

"I'm having fish tomorrow at my mom's and ham on Easter Sunday, so turkey sounds perfect", said Morelli. "Are you doing anything special for dinner tomorrow?"

"We're having poached salmon for dinner", said Ranger. "I told Ella that I would cook this weekend to give her a break. The staff is on four-hour rotations so the guys don't need meals made. It is something new that Hal instituted last Christmas, and the new holiday hours have appealed to the patrol and monitoring staff." He handed a serving spoon over to Morelli so that Joe could dish up some turkey tetrazzini. After Joe had dished up his own, Ranger portioned out some for himself and some for me, and carried the plates over to the table. Joe went back into the kitchen and came out with a salad, some salad bowls, and some dressings, and Ranger came out with ice waters for him and Joe, and a tall glass of milk for me. Joe had been over for dinner enough that he knew our routine and how best to help.

The table set, the men sat down and joined me in front of the food. "How is the case going, Joe?" I asked. "What was the result when you exhumed the body?"

Morelli smiled as he took a bite of the dinner and groaned in enjoyment. "The coffin was empty, as we thought it would be. There were some bricks in it, but there wasn't a body. So I then went to your aunt's house with a search warrant to look for your uncle. He was hiding in the upstairs linen closet. I have arrested both him and your aunt for fraud.

"However, when I was questioning your aunt, she said that she was being blackmailed. That was the real reason your uncle had returned to Trenton. The coroner, Larry Glease, had decided that a hundred thousand wasn't enough money to maintain his silence. He has been blackmailing your aunt and has been threatening to go to the police with proof that your uncle committed fraud. Your aunt was upset, and threatened to go to the police to report the blackmailing, and your uncle returned to Trenton to try to sort it all out and stop your aunt from going to the police. Your uncle refused to pay the blackmail money, and when we arrived with the search warrant, your aunt thought that Larry Glease had gone to the police after all."

"But if Larry had gone to the police, he would be arrested as well."

"Yes, but your aunt didn't seem to understand that. Apparently Larry told your aunt that he would tell the police that he had been forced into it, and that he hadn't wanted to commit fraud, and she believed him."

"Poor Aunt Betty. She has never been the brightest light. She has always reminded me of the description that she was as bright as a December day in Alaska."

"I got that feeling", said Morelli, "but I didn't want to say that to you."

I smiled. "She married into the family." Ranger and Morelli laughed.

"So your uncle committed the fraud", said Morelli. "He faked his death, and then had his funeral home 'do' the embalming and look after the service. No paperwork accompanied his death, so he would still receive benefits and Social Security and have access to his money. During the funeral, he flew to Arizona and that's where he has stayed for the last three months. However, with Larry tightening the screws on your aunt, he flew home to provide support to her and to finish packing up the house. They were scheduled to fly together back to Arizona at the end of the month, so in another five days."

"What are your next steps?"

"I've just come from questioning your aunt and, after I finish dinner with you, I'm going to arrest Larry Glease and, after he's been taken into custody, I'll arrest Stan Adams. He's the funeral home director at Pleasant Heaven who received the money for perpetuating the fraud."

I finished eating my tetrazzini, and Ranger noticed me looking forlornly at my plate. "May I get you more, babe?" he said.

I sighed. "Although that was good, I think I'll stick with salad and have a snack later. The heartburn has been bad, especially with lying down as much as I have. Thanks, though." I pushed aside my dirty plate and pulled over my salad bowl. Ranger smiled as I helped myself to a bowl of salad, and I poured on a bit of dressing, mixed it around, and proceeded to eat. It wasn't as good as turkey tetrazzini, but it was still good.

"I had wanted to let you know what was going on in the case", said Morelli. "I don't know when your grandmother will find out, but I'll try to keep her involvement quiet. If she figures out that she has instigated the investigation, she will identify people daily to investigate – and most of them will just be in response to some imagined slight rather than because there really is something there to investigate. Your grandmother will use it as a way of putting the screws to anyone who has thwarted her."

"I can definitely see that", I said. "She'll start with Grandma Bella."


	17. Chapter 17

Ranger and I settled in bed later that night. After Morelli had left, Ranger had let me up to inspect the nursery and I had liked the way that Ranger had set it up. I thought that we were now ready for Tia to come home. I wanted to sit in the rocker and dream for a while, but Ranger wanted me to lie down after being upright so much during the day to go to the doctor's and eat meals, and I had to admit that his request was reasonable.

By the time we got into bed that evening, I was getting tired again. Tia wasn't letting me sleep as easily lately, and it seemed the most I could sleep was in two-hour increments between potty breaks.

"I'll have to work on the weekend", said Ranger as I settled on my left side and he pulled me into his body for a cuddle.

"I figured you'd have to", I said. "Especially since you took the afternoon off today to get all those things for the baby. Thank you again for doing that. I know that you are busy."

"I liked it."

"I think that I'm not the only one with a nesting instinct right now."

I could feel Ranger's smile as he kissed me. "I definitely have a nesting instinct right now", he said. "I'm just glad that I've been able to avoid the sympathy pounds that many men gain."

I laughed. "I think that Albert gained ten pounds with every birth that Val had. The problem is that although Val lost most of hers, Albert did not."

"Has she lost more since I last saw her? After all, that was at the wedding two-and-a-half months ago, and she had lost about half her weight at the time."

"My mom said that she only has thirty more pounds to go. I know that she's selling clothes at a plus-size store. If she loses more weight, she might lose her job."

Ranger kissed me again. "It sounds like she might not mind that."

"I know", I said. "For some reason, she thinks that working in a store is beneath her, just because she has a college degree. She's always been a bit arrogant with her skills and talents."

Ranger snorted. "Babe, she's much more than arrogant. She's downright conceited, and she has no reason to be."

"It is years of conditioning. She's been told that she's wonderful and perfect for so long that she has begun to believe the hype. She doesn't realize that it doesn't make her better than other people. It just means that she has different skills."

"At least she isn't looking at becoming a bounty hunter."

I smiled. I remembered what happened when she had accompanied me on some of my captures in the past. It had been a disaster. "She knows better."

Ranger rubbed my tummy, and Tia kicked his hand hard. "That one felt like it hurt", he said.

I laughed. "Sometimes I wonder if it is possible for her to bruise me from the inside. She has a strong kick."

"Maybe this means that she'll be good at martial arts", said Ranger. "I look forward to teaching her how to protect herself."

"Are you planning on working with Julie this summer?"

"I am. I don't want her to lose her skills. We've also been talking about going for runs together, and running outside rather than on the treadmill. She said that she'd like to go for a run with me each day, and that she was used to running for an hour. Her pace time is good as well. I'll have to slow down a bit just because her legs aren't as long as mine, but she'll be a good running partner."

"The important part is that you are doing it together, and that's what she'll appreciate more than anything else."

"She said that she's looking forward to it. She said that she runs with other people in school, but she has never had a running partner on her own. Rachel and Ron don't run, and neither do any of her friends."

"Maybe, when she is a bit older, you should consider running half-marathons with her."

Ranger thought about that for a moment. "That would be fun", he said. "However, I want to wait until she is eighteen at least to do that. Running is fun for her right now, and I don't want to make it into work or something she feels she has to do to keep me happy. For the next few years, I'd like to make it just something we do together because we want to be together."

"How did you get into working out? After all, you had to be in good physical condition to get into the Rangers."

"My Uncle Alejandro. When I moved down to live with him in Miami, he insisted on doing exercise with me. I resented it at first, but when I was feeling particularly frustrated with something my uncle would take me on exercise breaks, and we would lace up our shoes and run a couple of miles. Over time I realized that I found the exercise calming, and that it drove the squirrelies away and I could concentrate better on whatever problem was in front of me. I also found that I often found the solution to the problem while I was exercising. I started, with my uncle's encouragement, to work out each morning before school and I found that, when I did, I was much better at school than when I didn't work out. So I started to go for an hour run when I got up, go to school, come home and have a snack, lift weights for an hour, make dinner for the family, then settle down and do homework for the rest of the evening. My marks improved dramatically with the new schedule and, when I enlisted, I was already in good condition and able to breeze through basic training."

"Exercise has been good for you."

"I know from experience that it is incredibly important for my physical and mental well-being."

"Hunh."

"Hunh?"

"I was just thinking about what was important to my physical and mental well-being, and I'd have to say that eating was. Nothing makes me feel better as quickly as happy food."

Ranger laughed. "I'll buy you a dozen doughnuts tomorrow."

I smiled. "That's not good for the baby", I said. "But after I lose the baby weight, I'll take you up on it."

"That's a deal", he said. He gave my stomach another rub as I yawned.

"I'm sorry that I can't make love", I said.

I could feel Ranger smile again. "It's okay, babe. Think of what we have to look forward to when you are cleared for sex after the baby is born." I laughed quietly. "Seriously, babe, what is most important to me is that we are able to cuddle like this, and be together like this. We'll be able to make love again. It just won't be in the near future." He rubbed my stomach again as I struggled not to fall asleep. "Te amo", he said.

"How do you say, 'I love you too'?"

"Yo también te amo."

"Yo también te amo", I said. I smiled. If I kept that up, I might get the hang of Spanish after all.


	18. Chapter 18

I woke up on Good Friday in a good mood. I had slept in until eleven and although I'd had to get up several times to use the washroom, I'd been able to sleep almost twelve hours despite it. I got up and used the facilities, had a shower and pulled my wet hair back into a ponytail. I dressed in a pair of leggings and the pale blue oversized sweater that Ranger had given me for Christmas, and wandered into the nursery. I looked around at the space. We'd used soft colors and fabrics, and the room was pleasing and soothing to the eye. It was the kind of room that you felt that you could breathe in.

Ranger came into the room behind me a few minutes later, and as he stood behind me he wrapped his arms around my middle and pulled me into his body for a cuddle. "What do you think?" he said softly.

I smiled. "I think it's perfect."

Ranger looked around the nursery. "So do I", he said. He let go of me, captured my hand, and gently tugged me towards the living room. He helped me down onto the sofa and, when I was settled, he went into the kitchen and poured me a decaf coffee. While I greatly missed drinking caffeine, I was appreciative to be able to drink coffee at all. In fact, it was through this pregnancy that I even questioned whether it was the smell of the coffee or the caffeine that woke my brain up. I had found while drinking decaf that the smell of the coffee alone did almost as much to wake me up as the coffee itself. I thought that was a good thing. Although I'll be cleared for drinking caffeine again, I wouldn't be able to drink coffee while breastfeeding in the quantities that I had previously. After all, from the research that I had done, drinking no more than two to three cups per day was the maximum. From what I'd seen in friends, I would be able to use all the help that I could get at staying awake.

Ranger came through with my coffee and a slab of lemon loaf. I had found that Ranger would make a couple of different loaves on the weekend, slice them, wrap them individually in stretch wrap, and put them in the freezer in separate freezer bags. After doing this a few times, we had about four or five different types of loaves in the freezer at any one time. It was nice, as there was always a selection of food to choose from, and Ranger didn't have to make special foods each morning. Sometimes he did anyway, but it was nice to have the option to eat premade foods rather than necessarily needing to make foods from scratch.

"Have you heard from Morelli today?" I said.

"He is coming over for lunch. If you hadn't gotten up when you did, I would have woken you in another fifteen minutes anyway."

"Okay." I paused. "Did he say whether he had picked up the coroner and the funeral home director?"

"He didn't. He was at the station when he called though, so I would assume that they were picked up."

"Okay." I paused. "Did he say whether my aunt and uncle have been awarded bail?"

"No, he didn't. But since it is Good Friday today and the courts won't be open until next week, I would assume that they are still in jail."

"Okay." I paused. "Did he say whether the coroner and the funeral home director had given more information?"

Ranger smiled. "Babe, you know as much as I know. We'll both have to wait another half hour to find out the answers to your questions."

"Okay."

"Your grandmother called today. She asked if you'd had a chance to look into your aunt's and uncle's case, and I said that you hadn't. She invited us for dinner, and I said that we wouldn't be coming and that the doctor had put you on bed rest for the foreseeable future. I explained to her that the baby wanted to come early, and we were currently in a tug-of-war with Tia and were trying to keep her in. Your parents did a good job at keeping things secret, but I thought with giving out that much information would divert your grandmother's mind from the investigation."

"Oh boy. Be prepared for my family to breach the gates."

"I told your grandmother that you were required to have very quiet days and you weren't supposed to stress yourself either physically or mentally."

I shook my head at Ranger's naivety. "Do you think that will matter? My grandmother doesn't see that she causes distress, so she thinks that she has the right to see us. After all, we are family, and to her family sticks together."

"Even though I told her that you weren't allowed visitors?"

"She doesn't see herself as being a visitor. The only thing that will slow her down is that my mother is having Val and her family for dinner, and they have some cooking to do. However, it's the one day a year that my family eats fish for dinner, and fish doesn't take long to cook so they might come yet. Don't be surprised if Val and Albert and the kids come too. If Mom and Dad refuse to bring Grandma, it is entirely likely that my grandmother will phone Val and invite them along. And Val, who is already jealous, will want to come so that she can find something to make fun of."

"Oh boy."

"Exactly. Welcome to my crazy family."

I sipped my coffee and enjoyed the lemon loaf. Ranger called it a triple-lemon loaf. I called it delicious, and I decided it was my new favorite.

"I look forward to when we can cook together", he said as he sat on the sofa behind me. I was stretched out and half-reclined against him, my back to his side and twisted slightly so that my left side was towards the sofa, and his arm was over my shoulder and resting on my belly. I think he could see that it would be a good idea to change the subject. I was worried about my family coming over, and Ranger could tell. He looked like he was kicking himself for having talked to my grandmother.

"I don't know", I said. "I've been enjoying eating edible food."

"You'll be a good cook", said Ranger with a frown. "I don't know why you keep putting yourself down all the time."

"You haven't tasted my cooking. I'm not putting myself down. I'm stating a fact."

Ranger sighed. "You'll be fine. You know how to boil eggs now, don't you?"

"Yes, although sometimes the yolks are slightly black."

"That just means that they're a little overcooked. Although it isn't as pretty, it doesn't hurt the taste of the egg. You know how to make a salad now, don't you?"

"Yes, but I don't know how to make a dressing."

"That isn't necessary. After all, most people get their dressings from bottles."

"And most people get their food from the frozen section. That's why it's so large in stores."

Ranger smiled. "Most people don't get their food from the frozen section. Yes, they get some things, but they don't get all things and that is good. Foods in the frozen section are often loaded with salt. You're better to cook from scratch."

"Maybe you're better, but I'm better to cook from frozen."

"The next thing we're going to work on is scrambled eggs. Eggs are a great food. They are so versatile and can be served at any meal, and they are incredibly healthy. Eating a poached egg is good with toast for breakfast, fried in a sandwich for lunch, or scrambled and served in a stir fry for dinner. If you know how to cook eggs, you are going a long way towards being independent and being able to sustain yourself."

"Okay", I said. I swallowed down a lump of panic. "Does Julie know how to cook?"

"A bit. I was thinking that I'd do a bit of cooking with her this summer as well."

"She'll like that."

"Her birthday is September eleventh. She'll be here until the middle of August. I was wondering whether we'd like to do something to celebrate her birthday before she goes back to Miami."

"What were you thinking?"

"I was wondering about inviting a few people over. There are some that she knows, like Ella and Tank and Amelia, and I was thinking that we'd have a dinner together. I don't know what we'll get her – maybe something for her bedroom in the new apartment? I don't know what a good present would be though."

"Something for her bedroom is a good idea", I said. "Then we don't have to worry about getting it home to Miami again. What about something like a comfortable chair to read in, or a lamp to go beside her bed?"

"That sounds good."

I finished my slice of lemon loaf as there was a knock on the door, and when Ranger opened it Morelli walked in. "Hey", I said as he came through and sat down. "Did you get the coroner and the funeral home director?"

"We did", said Morelli with a smile. "We arrested them last night, and both of them were surprised that we had picked them up. They hadn't realized that there was an investigation going on."

"Thank goodness my grandmother didn't know of it. She would have told them. Did you find out anything?"

"The coroner didn't want to tell us anything, but the funeral home director was singing like a canary. Apparently, the idea to commit fraud was the coroner's. He had come up with the idea over poker one night about a year ago, but didn't have the guts to do it himself. However, they were both happy to do their part in the fraud and to get their hundred thousand for their efforts. They were trying to figure out if there was another person that would be willing to commit fraud and they could do the same thing again."

"So everyone has been caught?"

"Yes. The insurance company will be glad to know that they will be getting the money back. I have some other news", said Morelli. "I talked to the uniforms. Ava Bigoni was picked up last night. Apparently your security guards identified her as a trespasser."

"She's been causing us problems?" I said. I turned my squinty eye on Ranger. He didn't look surprised.

"Oops – sorry!" said Morelli. He looked frustrated with himself.

"I didn't want your blood pressure to rise, babe."

"Tell me what has been going on." I glared at him.

Ranger sighed. "Ava was fired on Tuesday, as you know. After she was fired, she returned and tried to get on the floor. Security stopped her, and they called me. They said that she had told them that she had to get a computer file and she wouldn't be long. But she had timed her visit for the evening shift change, and the security staff that would have let her on the floor would have been different staff that let her off, and they wouldn't have paid attention as to how much time she was there. That was Tuesday night. I went down and talked to her, and told her that she would be arrested for trespassing if she came back again."

"Last night, she was caught trying to get into the building again", said Morelli. "She had a portable hard drive on her, and we went into her phone and looked at her email history. Apparently, she had someone interested in purchasing a copy of In-Spect. Security again stopped her at the door. Instead of calling Ranger that time, they called the TPD. Uniforms arrested her for trespassing and brought her in, and I personally questioned her this morning. With the email and the hard drive as evidence, we can charge her with stealing proprietary information."

"That's great", I said. "Hopefully she will stay away from us for now on."

"She will definitely be staying away from you until next week when the courts open up again. Right now, she's been put in the queue for a bail hearing. The interesting thing is that email that she had arranging for the purchase of In-Spect was dated last Sunday. I talked to Miguel this morning, and he told me that Monday, after work, Ava had tried to stay late. Miguel thought that she was trying to garner special attention, and he told her to go home. She hadn't wanted to leave, but Dirk was leaving and Miguel didn't want to take the chance that Ava left at the same time that he did. He was afraid that she would follow him home, so he asked Dirk to walk her out. She hadn't been happy with that, but he didn't give her the chance to say no. I guess she was making a second attempt at downloading a copy of In-Spect."

"Now I know why she looked so panicked when we fired her on Tuesday", I said.

I looked at Ranger, and he looked ticked. "Let us know if there is anything we need to do to help in the investigation", he said. "My guess is that Miguel is upset?"

Morelli smiled. "He wasn't happy. I think he blamed himself for having hired her."

"I'll phone him this afternoon", said Ranger. "Interviews don't show everything, and no matter how much testing and interviewing and checking of references we do, no matter how careful we are, hiring mistakes happen. We can't catch everything. It's no one's fault. Miguel did the best that he could."

Morelli nodded. "I think he'll appreciate the call."

Ranger's phone rang as we got up to pull lunch out of the warming drawer. Ranger had made some hot tuna sandwiches on crusty buns. They had tuna, cheese, mayonnaise, green pepper and green onions in them. I don't know if he put anything else in the filling, but he spooned it on crusty buns, wrapped the buns in tin foil, and heated them in the warming drawer until the cheese was melty and the filling was hot. He had made them before for me, and I had loved them. They were, in fact, my favorite way to eat tuna, and that was saying something because canned tuna was the one fish that I liked.

Ranger answered and listened for a moment. He sighed and looked at me, but he looked annoyed and I wondered what made him so. "I'll be down in a minute to see them", he said. "Tell them to wait there." He hung up the phone and turned to me. "I'm sorry, babe. You were right. Your family has come to visit."


	19. Chapter 19

Tears came to my eyes and I panicked. "Who's here?"

"Apparently you were right again. Your grandmother roped your sister and Albert and the kids into driving her here, and all of them are currently down in the lobby. Your grandmother has already tried to get on the elevator and come up on her own." My breath came hard and fast, and I plopped back down on the sofa. "What do you want me to do? If you prefer, I can turn them back at the lobby and refuse to let them in."

I tried to regulate my breathing, and I swallowed back a sob. "There is no way to feel good about this. If we turn them away, I will feel guilty and my blood pressure will rise. If they come up, I will feel angry and my blood pressure will rise. Either way will have an impact upon me and the baby."

Ranger looked tortured. "I'm so sorry, babe. I never thought that this would be the result of me saying that you weren't allowed visitors."

I sighed. "You didn't know, and you're doing the best you can in a bad situation. I understand that."

"What do you want me to do?"

I swallowed hard. "We have to have them up here sooner or later."

"I don't have a problem with turning them away", said Ranger. "You are the person who is important. If they don't see the nursery until after the baby is born and your blood pressure has stabilized, then that is okay. However, if you want to see them now, I'll support you in that as well."

"I just feel bad. They are my family."

"And this is your health."

I sighed again and swallowed hard. "How about we let them up but tell them that I was just about to have a nap so they can only stay fifteen minutes? That way they get to see the place but their impact will be lessened."

"That works for me", said Ranger. "I'll be back in a minute." He walked to the door and picked up his keys.

"I'll go down with you", said Morelli.

"Oh, no", I said. "You can stay here and help me deal with everybody."

"Haven't I suffered enough with my own family?" said Morelli with a smile.

I laughed and lay down again on the sofa. Ranger left, and I turned to Morelli. "How do you want to explain your presence here?"

"I think we'll just leave it that I was here on police business."

"Okay. I'll let you take lead on that one." I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, just like Livy had taught me in my sessions.

"Are you in pain?" said Morelli. "You're breathing so deeply and with such control, like you are in pain."

I smiled. "No, I'm not in pain. I'm just trying to find my center of gravity after being knocked off-kilter with the news of my grandmother's and Val's presence. It's like my two worst nightmares arriving at once."

"Those are your two worst nightmares? Worse than Ramirez? Worse than Brodie? You have faced down death, have faced down torture, and your family is the worst that you've seen?"

"The thing is that with Ramirez or Brodie, I didn't care if they died. I mean, I did because they were human beings and I didn't want to see any human die unnecessarily. But it didn't distress me much to know that they weren't still in this world."

"It did with Brodie."

"That was because I shot him. I wasn't upset that he wasn't in this world any more. I was upset to know that it was my fault. But the point is that I didn't care if they were upset by something I did. I do, however, care very much if I hurt my grandmother's or my sister's feelings."

"They are family? It's a simple as that?"

"Yes, and no matter how much I may currently wish it otherwise, they always will be my family."

Ranger escorted my family into the apartment. Edmund was snuffling and on Ranger's shoulder and I could tell that he had been crying. Ranger, like usual, had been able to soothe him.

"He's teething", said Val. "He's not usually so fussy."

I rolled my eyes.

"It's okay, Val", said Ranger. "He's settling now."

"Auntie Stephie?" said Lisa.

"She's in the living room lying on the sofa", said Ranger. I knew he had pointed out my location when the kids all came running in to see me.

Victoria jumped up and landed on my belly. I ooph'd out a breath, and Morelli picked up Victoria and put her on his shoulders. "Hey, Victoria. I haven't seen you for a while."

She pulled Morelli's hair and giggled.

Grandma looked at Morelli. "Hi, Joe. What are you doing here?"

"I'm the TPD liaison with Rangeman. I was here on official police business."

"Do you have a hot case?" said my grandmother. She looked enthused, and she plopped down on the loveseat.

"Aren't you going to get up to meet us?" said Val.

I concentrated on my breathing again.

"Steph is on complete bed rest", said Ranger. "This means that she can't get up to greet you, no matter how much she'd like to."

"It smells like we interrupted your lunch", said Albert.

"That's okay", said Ranger. "I know that you aren't staying long, and our lunch can keep for ten minutes while you have a quick visit. Would you like to see the nursery?"

Val's family all walked into the nursery, and I could hear them exclaim as they looked at it.

"Will Tia stay in this room all by herself?" said Lisa. She looked around her in amazement. "I have Victoria and Edmund in my room."

"Tia won't be as lucky as you", said Ranger. "She won't have built-in friends to share her room like you do."

"What about Julie?" said Val. "Where will she sleep?"

"I'll give you a tour of the rest of the apartment", said Ranger. He quickly showed them our bedroom, our ensuite, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, Julie's room, and the den.

"This is nice", said Albert. He looked at his wife, and Val looked like she had sucked on a lemon. He saw her face and looked dejected.

"Mommy, I have to go potty", said Victoria. "NOW!"

"I'm sorry ", said Val. "Victoria is toilet training right now."

"Not a problem", said Ranger. "The powder room is right there", he said as he pointed to the bathroom.

By the time they had made it to the bathroom, Victoria was hopping from one foot to the other. I hoped that she made it. I didn't have spare clothes for her to change into, but knowing Val she was prepared with a few different outfits. I may be having problems with her and not appreciating her lack of support, but I had to admit that she was a good mom. I knew that Ranger would disagree, but I still thought that she was.

My grandmother leaned forward on the seat and pinned her glance on Morelli. "Did Steph tell you about my brother? He was supposed to have died three months ago, but I saw him a few days ago. I know that he's committing fraud."

"That's interesting", said Morelli. "Both your brother and his wife were arrested yesterday for fraud, as were the other people involved in the case. Their bail hearing will be next week."

"They are spending the weekend in jail?" said my grandmother. She looked delighted.

"Yes, with all their friends who were in on the scheme."

"Did Steph tell you about it?" said my grandmother. "Is that why you were looking into the case?"

"I can't tell you that. That's an ongoing police investigation, and the details must remain secret."

"But surely you can tell me. I'm an old woman. Who am I going to tell?"

I choked and looked at Albert, and Albert grinned at me. He knew as much as I did that she would tell _everybody_.

"That may be", said Morelli smoothly, "but it is still a police investigation and I cannot divulge its details."

My grandmother looked frustrated.

Val came out of the bathroom with her daughter in tow. "How are you feeling, Steph?" she said.

"Okay, I guess. The contractions have stopped, so that's good."

Val laughed. "I can understand that. I wanted mine to stop as well."

"I'm sure you take after Val", said Albert. "She's a birthing machine. I mean, having babies for her is easy. You'll be in and out of labor before you know it. I think Val's last labor was only twelve hours."

"Yes", said Val, "but my babies were born at term. I didn't have to worry about the babies being premature. It's a different kettle of fish."

"That's true, that's true", said Albert. "I can see that it would be different."

I concentrated on my breathing again.

"You're getting to be as big as Val was", said Albert. "I can tell that you are going to deliver soon. I could always tell that, when Val reached a certain size, she was about to deliver. It was a more accurate gauge to me than due dates."

Tears came to my eyes. I didn't want to look like Val did in her pregnancies. She had looked like a beached whale. I breathed some more.

Grandma turned back to Morelli. "I have a few other people to investigate", she said. "Just like with my brother, I know that something is fishy with these people."

"You're welcome to make a statement at the station", said Morelli. "However, I am technically off duty. I just came here to report on a case that Ranger was interested in and to have some lunch. Then I'll be off to my mom's for the afternoon." He walked over to me, lifted my legs and sat down so that my feet were in his lap. Ranger, having just gotten Edmund to sleep, walked over to the other end of the sofa, sat down, and angled his body so that my head was using his thighs as a pillow.

Grandma looked at Morelli at one end and Ranger at the other, and her eyes began to sparkle. "Is this like a modern marriage?" she said.

"Pardon?" I said.

"You have two men on the go? Who is the father – Ranger or Joe?"

"Ranger! Grandma, I don't know what is going through your mind, but you can kick it right out again."

Her eyes sparkled more. "That happens now though, doesn't it? I mean, you get a gay couple and they want to have kids, and you need a willing woman to have the baby." Both Morelli and Ranger choked. "Who better than a good friend of both of them?"

"Grandma, no!"

"I think it is very forward of you to have their baby", said Grandma. "Did you have a threesome as well?"

"No! That's disgusting!"

"I don't know. I've always wanted to be part of a threesome."

"I haven't", I said.

Grandma looked at the three of us again and her eyes were sparkling with excitement. "I have the story of the century. Steph settled down with two men and has their baby for them. You don't mind if I embellish it a little, do you?"

"YES!" said Ranger, Morelli and me at the same time.

Val laughed and shook her head. "Good luck", she said. "I had been envious but now? Not so much."

_~ The End ~_

_Thank you for reading Exhumed 38. I hope you enjoyed it. Next in the series is Nativity 39, and I will start posting it today. - Sarah_


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